President Obama’s director of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, spoke to a forum on Friday and said that the nation’s economic crisis has led to an “excess of fear” among Americans that must be broken to reverse the downturn.
Mr. Summers stated that, “Fear begets fear,” and that “is the paradox at the heart of the financial crisis.”
“It is this transition from an excess of greed to an excess of fear that President Roosevelt had in mind when he famously observed that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself,” Summer said. “It is this transition that has happened in the United States today.”
Summers spoke amid new signs of a deepening recession. The U.S. trade deficit plunged in January to the lowest level in six years as the economic downturn cut America’s demand for imported goods, the Commerce Department reported Friday.
The economic adviser said it’s still too early to gauge the broad impact of the president’s recovery program.
“But it is modestly encouraging that since it began to take shape, consumer spending in the U.S., which was collapsing during the holiday season, appears, according to a number of indicators, to have stabilized,” Summers told the Brookings Institution, a think tank.
Summers was asked by a member of the audience what the nation’s business community could do to help speed the recovery.
“What we need today is more optimism and more confidence,” Summers said.
SynergyBlog agrees – and we’ve decided that we are going to do our part to end the recession by not allowing it to self-fulfill.
We need to establish trust in the marketplace and in our organizations. To do that we must do the following:
- Deliver Excellence in the products we make and services we provide. Every time.
- Exude a level of Goodwill that can be detected in the things we do and say. Is it that difficult to help a neighbor or a colleague in need?
- Maintain the highest level of Ethical Standards in your industry sector. Promote integrity in word and deed.
- Create Value for our clients, constituents, strategic partners, and colleagues. Ask yourself daily, “Have I delivered on my brand promise?”
- Listen to the needs of stakeholders and act on what you hear. Responsiveness can make the difference between success and failure in these economic times.
By continuing to exemplify trustworthiness in the marketplace, we fuel the engine of confidence in the economy. One business at a time.
See the full AP story here.
Synergy Blog: Ethical Leadership, Brand Trust, and Marketing Strategy 