The past couple of weeks the country has been enveloped in a financial banking crisis.

Congress and the current administration were essentially forced to quickly create and pass a bill to keep money flowing through the banking and financial systems so American business could remain open.  Otherwise, the country was threatened with a virtual business standstill.  Predictions had business coming to a grinding halt.  I can imagine that happening, can you?  If the Congress doesn’t soon pass a bill (which it looks like they will), the ability for businesses to borrow money will dry up and effectively shut the country down.  Fortunately, it does appear this crisis will be resolved and business isn’t going to stop any time soon.

How did all this happen?  It isn’t that one day we woke up and there was a financial crisis.  This was years in the making.  If we look at the Democrats and the Republicans we can find enough blame to go around for everyone.  The people and the government agencies that should have been paying attention just weren’t paying attention.  Now we can see the video clips of specific people who sent the warning signal out that this was going to happen, but they weren’t shouting loud enough for most of us to hear. 

It always surprises me that these partisan politicians put their own needs before that of the country.  This was a complete failure in leadership.  The people that were mining the store weren’t paying attention.  There were also so many citizens of this country that were wrapped up in the greed of it all that they didn’t even notice they were about to fall off a cliff.

The recent events will be studied and debated for years to come.  If only they would have done this or that, it never would have happened.  To me, the real lesson here is that none of this needed to happen.  But it did happen.

I really think that all business people need to examine what happened and understand the same thing could happen to their business.  You can’t have blinders and be in denial about what’s happening in your business.  If your business is headed to go over the cliff, don’t go faster so you can get to the cliff sooner. 

The human aspect that consistently trips people up is greed.  This entire bailout situation was caused by greed.  Nothing more.  Unscrupulous lenders who wanted to lend money to people who couldn’t pay it back so they could get higher interest rates and more profit.  And people themselves who because of their greed were spending more money than they could afford to pay back and buying houses well above their means. 

Start to take an objective look at your business.  Evaluate whether you are on solid ground or if some of your business practices will eventually cause you to need a bailout.

The only problem is the government isn’t going to bail you out.  You need to save yourself and your company.  And you need to start today.