OPINION: Surely It Won’t Come To That?

Daily we watch this giant game of chicken being played by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the President over raising the debt ceiling and the ever increasing budget deficit. Both sides appear to move and then step back, bob and weave like fighters, and wax philosophically blaming each other for the mess we are in. It’s great opera if it wasn’t so serious, and the fat lady has certainly not sung.

Meanwhile a different cast of characters are in high panic. They are called risk managers and they are employed throughout corporate America to help their employers identify, analyze, control and manage risk both from internal risks and external events. They have been around for a while in small numbers, but since Sarbanes – Oxley was passed, they have taken on a major role in corporate America. In fact the chief risk officer at Bank of America last year made more than the President of BofA.

What risk managers dislike is risk that is impossible to control, unpredictable, and is infinite in the number of outcomes that are possible. Their perfect storm may be about to occur, and the damage that might be imminent is immeasurable in size or duration. Imagine today’s emergency meeting – “Has anyone analyzed the effect on the company if they don’t raise the debt ceiling? It won’t come to that? We have a responsibility to prepare for it if it does? It won’t come to that? Are we prepared? It won’t come to that?”

My bet is that our leaders will come up with a short term solution, possibly just a short term extension of the debt limit and everyone will blame the other side, and go off campaigning for 2012. Meanwhile what happens when risk managers and their equivalents overseas see that Congress is incapable of working with the President, and simply decide they don’t want to play with us anymore. They take their chips to the bank and cash out.  But surely, “It won’t come to that?”

Meanwhile our nation, like Rome, is burning. Our leaders define leadership as the ability to bicker and fight among each other and simply push problems down the road. We say we want to tackle our problems, but we never do. It is easier to blame somebody else than tell each other the truth. Meanwhile health care costs continue to skyrocket, people are living and working longer, medicine is making dramatic strides in longevity while we make no plans for a population explosion of older individuals, and the rest of the world is losing confidence in our ability to pay our bills. We have stopped “sticking to our own knitting” and “minding our own house.” In the areas of education, public health, and the environment we are lagging behind the rest of the world. We have failed to provide the opportunity for everyone who wants to work to be employed and earn a living wage, while our basic infrastructure crumbles.

Not one of these problems is impossible to repair or beyond our capabilities, but it is not time to punt again and hope for a miracle on defense. Or the voice of “surely it won’t come to that,” will change to ‘how did it happen?”