Sunday, May 23, 2010

No margin for error

The veteran global investor Mohamed El-Erian, who runs Pimco and has lived through many a financial crisis, recently issued a report describing the new, perilous state of today's global economy.
He described it like this: "The world is on a journey to an unstable destination, through unfamiliar territory, on an uneven road and, critically, having already used its spare tire."

I like that image. America used its spare tire to prevent a collapse of the banking system and to stimulate the economy after the subprime market crash. The European Union used its spare tire on its own economic stimulus and then to prevent a run on European banks triggered by the meltdown in Greece. This all better work, because we're not only living in a world without any more spares but also in a world without distance. Nations are more tightly integrated than ever before. We're driving bumper to bumper with every other major economy today, so misbehavior or mistakes anywhere can cause a global pileup.

And that leads to the real point of this column: In this kind of world, leadership at every level of government and business matters more than ever. We have no margin of error anymore, no time for politics as usual or suboptimal legislation. But what does that mean,
"leadership"? More >>>