A global shift in consciousness has occurred during October.  Trust and confidence have given way to fear and uncertainty. Plans and expectations have been completely altered or dashed altogether.  Governments, entire industries, equity markets and the majority of the adult populations in the developed countries of the world are staring into a financial abyss that has no correlation to anything any of them have experienced (unless they are 80 years or older).

Governments separately, and then in consort struggle to stay ahead of a financial catastrophe they can’t quite fathom.  Hundreds of millions of people feel as thought they have been punched in the gut.  Standing on solid ground becomes a metaphor desperately longed for rather than a reality.  For every theory about what to do with one’s money there is an opposite one put forth.  Financial volatility seems omnipresent.   All of this has produced a shift in consciousness that is palpable.

When belief systems come under attack or are shown to be false, when institutional reliability becomes highly questionable,  …

A  column here two weeks ago placed the financial crisis within a historical context. The financial meltdown is part of the disruptive transition from the Information Age to the Shift Age.  We are moving through a period of turmoil when the old order is being replaced by a new order.  The nation state economic model is being replaced by a new global model.  We are at a time when the old ways no longer seem to work and yet the new realignments are not yet clear.

In the United States there have been three great waves that have arced over our society during the last 30 years.  The incredible run up in residential real estate values since the late 1970s was the first arc.  Except for a short period in the early 1980s and then again in the 1990s, the value of residential real estate seemed to go ever upward.  This of course created a great sense of wealth for those that benefited.  In the early part of this …

More than a year ago, I wrote a column about two damaged brands. One damaged brand was the “Made in China” brand and the other was the well respected financial brand of Wall Street.  At that time China was dealing with the fact that pet food produced in China was killing pets all over the world and that toys produced in China had extremely unsafe levels of lead.  Also at that time Wall Street was beginning to deal with the meltdown of the mortgage backed securities market.

This column immediately came to mind last week.  In the same week that the $700 billion bail out was being discussed in Washington, China was basically shutting down its’ dairy business due to criminal negligence and bribery.  More than 50,000 Chinese infants have been stricken with life threatening kidney ailments due to the addition of melamine to most baby formula and milk products.  There are two things that are similar to both these crises.  First, the dairy industry in …

As a futurist, I view the financial crisis that exploded last week from a high level, long term perspective.  The macro forces that are reshaping our world must be considered when such a crisis occurs.  In addition this particular crisis will force us to reevaluate long held economic ideals that may no longer have validity in their purest forms.

It is important to state that there are many traceable causes to this crisis. It is these particulars that politicians and those that need to blame something or someone will focus on as a way to justify a point of view or to seek retribution.  There will be much argument about who is to blame and what needs to be done to protect the U.S. and global financial system from further meltdown.  This is an important discussion to have, as long as there is perspective and an honest desire to right the ship rather than to just be right.

There have been financial crises in the past that can be looked at for guidance and for reassurance.  Guidance in how to handle what now confronts us, and reassurance that we can and will weather this crisis.  The Great Depression has been mentioned a lot this past week, as it was the specter of such a calamity that provoked the actions made by the Fed and the Treasury Department .  This was due in part to the fact that Ben Bernanke is regarded as an authority on this historical economic event.  Perhaps a more …