Part ll: Self-Blame and the Economic Crisis
When we last chatted (yesterday), I was looking into the ways people might be getting down on themselves for being caught flat-footed by the economic crisis. I put this self-blame, at least the kind that I’m experiencing, into two categories; first, for not being on top of changes in your chosen field, changes that would eventually, perhaps now, be putting your job and career at risk. My personal example was the way I didn’t realize how the explosion of channels and viewing options on television since I started working in TV would endanger the traditional broadcasting business model. Lesson? Don’t let changes in your industry sneak up on you. Don’t be a casualty of new business paradigms and technologies in your profession.
Or, I should say, don’t be an unwitting casualty. If you’re going to get run over, at least try and see the bus coming. How various occupations evolve (or devolve), when you get down to it, is mostly out of your control, and that’s where it’s different from self-blame category number two: the failure to get your personal and family finances under control BEFORE this bad moon started rising.
My wife and I have been fortunate to be able to make ends meet, provide for the kids, and also have some fun. We’ve even been able to run up some surpluses from time to time. But I guess you could say surpluses aren’t what they used to be. I know ours isn’t, and I blame myself for that. I’m the keeper of the checkbook in our house, and I’ve done a pretty lousy job in recent years setting up budgets and following them. I figured the good times have been rolling along nicely since the late ‘90’s, that they’d continue to roll along, and that having just a vague notion of income vs. outflow would be sufficient.
I figured wrong. And even though I remain happily and gainfully employed, I’m now realizing how much uncertainty there is for almost everybody these days. Aside from some new hires for the Mets and Yankees (I have GOT to get my kids playing more baseball) I don’t know many people who think their near-term financial future is going to be getting brighter. All of a sudden, that overspending we’ve done for quite a while doesn’t seem very wise in retrospect. NOW I’m finally getting a grip on it, but I’m mad at myself for not doing this years ago. We’d be much better prepared for worst-case scenarios. Better late than bankruptcy, I suppose. But I feel like I let my family down.
Self-blame can be useful, then, for finally starting to get things on track. But too much of it isn’t healthy. I tell myself that what’s past is past, let’s be better positioned to handle whatever comes in the future. That makes me feel a little better. That, and the knowledge that in these matters I’ve been writing about, I have lots and lots of company.
Comments: 4
hey Jim this is Alex from Brooklyn, i definitely think that self-blame effect. Me being a young adult, i usually dont tend to save any money. So now i'm suffering the cosequences.
Dear Jim, Peace!
Self-responsibility and self-forgiveness is much healthier perspectives to manage your monetary and personal matters and spiritual well-being.
Describing your situation as 'self-blame' puts you into two energy depleting states: being a victim and being a helpless victim looking for sympathy. Empowering energy exists already in you: "I have strength for all things through 'Christ' who is the Source of my strength." [Philippians: 4.13]
Acknowledging mistakes or habits needing to be corrected by forgiving oneself and taking responsibility, perhaps, also sharing some
of the planning and perspective with your spouse and later with your children's input and respected say, can and shall propel your plans.
As my father always counseled: Always have a plan and the first step of the plan be ready to change it. Flexibility is the fuel of change; Freedom is the vehicle driving self-determination on the wheels of Truth, steering and signaling with LOVE always. You're the driver with Divine 'Global Guidance' positioning.
I can have empathy for anyone trying to empower himself, herself or themselves even by asking for help or advise for action, accountability and
affirmation of personal, family, spiritual life.
I offer you the vintage of victory rather than the vinegar of victimization. One Calvary was too many, a thousand Christmas' daily, a good start to living and Being in peace.
As I had to encourage a Rwandan refugee missing both feet, as both of us on our knees, face-to-face on Christmas Eve 1994 in Bukavu: "Life always has times of tears. If you keep your head down, your tears shall make mud puddles and you'l see a muddy reflection of yourself."
"If you keep your chin up, your inner Light shall shine through and in the rainbow of your tears, you shall see a new horizon and have better inner reflection of yourself, looking forward to strive, to thrive, to be alive and to revive!" The young soldier's name: Jean Baptiste.
We had Christmas born of the mud of both ours knees giving strength for face-to-face Love, both of us--all of us--need and can see starting with our own self-worth giving thanks for Being!
Have a Blessed Christmas 2008, now, and every time you open your eyes!
With peace, prayers & LOVE,
Steadfast in Spirit & in Truth,
Pastor Michael-Vincent Crea
One World Life Systems
http://www.oneworldlifesystems.org
owlsmvc@gmail.com
One World Life Systems
“Serving One God and Developing One World for the Common Good of Humanity”
Michael-Vincent Crea
Founder & Pastor
owlsmvc@gmail.com
Phone: 212-360-7458
For Immediate Release 18 December 2008 For More Info: 212-360-7458
Pro Bono Pastor’s ‘Cry of the Poor’ Puts Swindlers of the Rich in Perspective
Standing up to a swindler or two, alone, Harlem Pastor Michael-Vincent Crea would like to take up the case of the
‘rich’ for the sake of the ‘poor.’ Now, as shock still has rich investors sinking faster than the infamous Titanic, the
Pastor is again safely on shore, even after his own whistle blowing went unheard. Crea’s own swimming saved him.
Before Bernard Madoff, accused captain of his $50B flagship fraud case, Pastor Crea stood up to Joseph Greenblatt,
a convicted pirate of private investors and federal housing funds for Harlem’s poor. Recent reports of losses to the
rich by Madoff, follow the flotilla of fraud reports, failing to account for the impact upon the poor. Capsized by the wakes of the wealthy, hard working taxpayers are coerced to cover the costs, as Pastor Crea must bury the poor.
Pastor Crea, in behalf of Harlem SRO seniors, disabled and low income neighbors, won a 40-month rent strike, first
started against Greenblatt, who swindled Clinton HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, as well, as an 80-year old couple
of $3.4M from his own Orthodox synagogue. Sentenced in NY to nine years and awaiting his fed sentencing, the
NJ Attorney General has indicted him for defrauding another $42 M from securities investors. At Christmas 2003,
without heat or hot water for ten days, Pastor Crea’s neighbor died of pneumonia, as Greenblatt sunbathed in Florida.
According to Pastor Crea, local elected officials and staffs remained silent during and after his stand for the ‘cry of
the poor.’ As with Greenblatt’s ‘gunboat’ pirating, only Madoff’s wrongdoing against the rich gets the ‘news.’ The out of pocket, pro bono Pastor is still serving with only $673 monthly social security asking, “Does anyone care?”
After his HPD victory for 230 violations against Abe Betesh, ABECO CEO, NY 1 did three reports, forcing Betesh
to comply with a 24-hour Court order, 24-days later. Yet, NYC Council member Dickens, deaf to her own poor,
only saw fit to meet Betesh. He bought the SRO building after federal foreclosure and bankruptcy of Greenblatt.
My 9 News reported on Abe Betesh’s illegal conversion, that Crea had DOB shut down. Betesh retaliated, illegally
locking-out the Pastor. Mayor Bloomberg’s staff admitted wrongdoing but left Pastor Crea homeless last Christmas.
“Madoff’s marauding of money managers of the rich is not the real reason for their empty ‘chests.’ Rather, all of
America’s heartless moral bankruptcy is the real crime against the poor. The hard working taxpayers of all
incomes are our real wealth. The Bernard Madoffs, Joseph Greenblatts and multi-millionaires are together reaping their own “root of all evil, the love of money,” explains Pastor Crea. From the perspective of the poor, he adds,
“Madoff and Greenblatt, brought down rich investors not because of their own consumptions but all of their own
presumptions. The poor cannot afford either to consume or presume but are counting on every penny from heaven.”
Pastor Crea had a good Samaritan friend encouraging him to hold on and never let go of his dream to buy his SRO,
continuing his work with the Harlem’s poor. When this friend died of AIDS in July, the Clinton Foundation told
Crea that Bill Clinton doesn’t give any help locally to persons with HIV/AIDS, after nine months of having Pastor Crea’s proposal to buy the SRO Greenblatt swindled from Clinton’s administration and taxpayers’ money. Now,
after winning the rights of a lease made possible by his Good Samaritan pal, the Pastor is seeking private benefactors.
Maybe, Mort Zuckerman and others would like to contact Pastor Crea. Instead of circling with their sharks for long lawsuits, their own hearts are more likely a quicker and better return by investing, now, in the lives of the poor. Like
“Pennies from Heaven,” Pastor Crea shall count theirs for Harlem’s poor, teaching all to swim back to a safer shore. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
365 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., PO BOX 1259, Harlem, NY 10027-1259 PHONE: 212-360-7458
http://www.oneworldlifesystems.org
Dear Jim,
First I just want to say that I love reading your blog. Does Kaity have one as well? If not can you float the idea by her? I love the two of you on air, you guys always make me laugh.
I don't know if I can empathize with the people who has spent more than they have saved. Like you have said, "If you’re going to get run over, at least try and see the bus coming." (which by the way, as an avid transit rider, made me sad reading it). This economic "crisis" has opened our eyes in a sense, that we can't/shouldn't keep this wasteful spending. What happened to the good old ideas of saving more than spending? It's like these days people are so consumed with materials and things that they are willing to forgo necessities for vanity. The same thing with the whole mortgage situation, people were being approved for mortgages that they knew they couldn't pay back; those people ended up just using the money to buy buy buy and the result? Defaults upon defaults leading to this whole bailout.
And now with the new budget proposals from Albany, it serves as bitter medicine for us all to learn to save once more. You know the saying of 'saving for a rainy day'. I can't think of a more rainier occasion than this one.
BTW, don't feel too bad Jim, at least you have a job. :P
There are certain things we can see coming, but this, no way. This is not a bus, this is a perfect storm. The scale of what is happening financially now is too vast for anyone to understand, which is why managing this crisis is so difficult. I have my own ideas as to when the clouds started gathering, that in my view was in the 80s under the increasing lack of regulation of big business (and, as we now see, in government itself).
However, the U.S. is no longer a country where a middle-class worker can pay for an entire family. Wages have not kept up with expenses. Health care costs have been skyrocketing and government has not bothered to address this problem because it’s actually very good for big business healthcare. Most people have come to rely on credit cards and debt because there is no other way to pay for the needs of a whole family.
I’m all for personal responsibility, and have dissolved 401Ks to avoid having to pay astronomical credit card fees. I’ve read extensively, negotiated with credit card companies, taken on roommates to help pay rent I’ve put all of my extra money the past 2 years to pay down my debt from being unemployed 2 years ago, I’ve almost succeeded and now – I’m unemployed again.
I think people are quicker to blame themselves than to actually do the scary work of being a citizen and protesting when our money is being taken away from us (stolen) without our consent from huge, global companies with a staggering amount of power.
A street criminal will get more time for stealing a few dollars than a “white-collar” criminal does for stealing literally trillions. Citizens need to care more about civic involvement and protesting. People are getting angry enough that something good could come out of this whole mess -- the Constitution may actually really be "of the People" again.
It might be worth a little pain.