Don't just wait for good times to return

摘要

Guessing how long the bad times might last has turned into a competitive sport: "You may say that it's the worst recession since the Great Depression, but I say it's the worst since the Panic of 1907". This machismo of misery is a poor substitute for planning for recovery. When I wrote before about the need to look ahead, one correspondent asked whether I'd ever lived through a recession. Sadly I was already well into my career when the secondary banking collapse of 1974 hit, and have lived and worked through everything since. Many lessons come from this, but one is that there is no point in just sitting around waiting for the good times to return.