We Ignore Unintended Consequences At Our Peril
Early in my business career, I was faced with a challenge that gave me an appreciation for a critical lesson about life and business. It’s that oftentimes, even with the best of intentions, our actions create consequences completely different from what we intend.
It’s that insight that makes me so concerned about the grand central banking experiment being conducted around the globe right now. With little more than a lever to ham-fistedly move interest rates, the central planners are trying to keep the world’s debt-addiction well-fed while simultaneously kick-starting economic growth and managing the price levels of everything from stocks to housing to fine art.
As with an earlier article I wrote focusing on the Bullwhip Effect phenomenon: the complexity of the system, the questionable credentials of the decision-makers, and the universe’s proclivity towards unintended consequences all combine to give great confidence that things will NOT play out in the way the Fed and its brethren are counting on.
A Puzzle To Solve
Two years after graduating business school, I joined the team at Yahoo! Finance as its Marketing lead. It was a crazy time there; the tech bubble was in mid-burst and advertiser dollars — the main source of revenue for the business unit — were fast drying up. We went through several general managers within my first year there as the leadership scrambled for a sound course to chart.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
