Taking Time to Think Economically

Now, you may not have asked yourself yet, but with the week's stock market news, consider:

Is the better model for our economy a cuckoo clock or an hourglass?

That old cuckoo clock has been hanging on the wall since your parents brought it back from their trip to Wallabash, Wisconsin. It clicks with each swing of its pendulum, seemingly progressing all the time, until you realize it has circled back to where it was twelve hours ago. You lift the weights every few days to keep it in motion, then you leave it to its task. It cries its news with a regularity that you become accustomed to ignore, except on those sleepless nights when you anxiously count through every chirp it emits outside your bedroom door.

On the other hand, the hourglass only works if you flip it entirely on its head periodically.

That old economy has been churning along since Alexander Hamilton shepherded in the First Bank of the United States. Probably since before that. It clinks with each financial exchange, seemingly moving the dollars and cents around from pocket to pocket, until you realize that it likely circled back into the bank account of the person who made the first trade. You buy what you want, sell what you have, and save or invest what's left, then you leave the markets to do what they do. The financial news is cast with such regularity that you become accustomed to ignore, except when some frenzy keeps you awake counting your assets and compounding your anxiety..

And then, they change the game. Regulations, technology, war, peace, politics. Things change.

How do you know if it is a revolutionary game change or merely a common cuckoo call which startled you from a shallow nap? Even if the immediate cause of alarm is that little bird, how do you know that your latent Jedi senses did not detect a disturbance in the Force (or burglar in the house)? In truth, you probably do not - nobody does in the first moments.

It is better to prepare for change, in advance and as a general and inevitable fact, than let it provoke you into impulsive reactions. Fight, flight, or freeze instincts did not build civilization, from benefit-deferring agriculture to the globe-spanning economy of today. Preparation, planning, and patience did.

Perhaps the question is not whether the economy is a cuckoo clock or an hourglass, but whether our lives are. You are not going to avoid those regular reminders of the quirky nature of the world in which we live. You are going to experience the big events (graduation, marriage, children, new jobs, lost jobs, retirement) that turn your life topsy-turvy. But even when inverted, remember the hourglass measures your life with the same grit within that defines you. Do not abandon your long-term strategy for a chaotic lack of a plan. Although you cannot control everything, you should control yourself.