Must Read - from The Milken Institute

In times of historic change, it’s instructive to look at some facts:
- The stock market is down 50 percent.
- Banks are in trouble and have curtailed lending.
- Commentators predict widespread industrial bankruptcies.
- Unemployment is rising fast. - Interest rates are volatile.

It all sounds familiar. But those headlines aren’t from today. They’re from 1974. Doomsayers foresaw disaster 35 years ago, predicting hundreds of corporate bankruptcies. New York City and State, and utilities like Con Edison, seemed on the brink of collapse. Business publications wrote that major money-center banks would fail and ran articles like, “I’ll Never Own a Stock Again!” Struggling companies got little help from financial institutions, which had problems of their own. Businesses with the highest returns on investment, the most innovation and the fastest growth were starved for capital. The debt of good companies sold for pennies on the dollar.
In 1974, as now, those who once thought they had the answers came to realize their assumptions were flawed. But opportunity emerged from that crisis as people with creative solutions and the skill to implement them stepped forward and developed new ways to access capital. Over the next two years, the markets recovered strongly. That skill in finding new opportunities when things look bleak is part of what economists call human capital. It’s an asset I began to appreciate in my studies of credit at Berkeley and of capital structure at Wharton four decades ago. Later, in financing companies that could grow and create jobs, I always considered management skills as important an asset as numbers on the balance sheet. And it’s never more important than in times of crisis.

Why post this to a blog dedicated to all things sales related? Obvious - it's important not to loose sight of where we are and since history has a way of repeating itself, to be reminded that it's okay to contact a client, prospect for new clients, make sales and help by doing our part as professional salespeople to pull this economy and this amazing nation out of the mess it has found itself in.

Have a POWERFUL day!