Leadership Requires making Tough Decisions

It is not often that I don't write my newsletter on a Sunday but the last week has not been like any week we have experienced in the past. You see I have been overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. 

While I can say that I am one of the lucky one's because I have a job, I have anticipated a financial meltdown which allowed me to position myself financially to preserve my capital but this still doesn't eliminate the fear.

Let me explain further. I have a family with compromised immunity I have a daughter who has spent 6 years in isolation. Not because she wanted to be isolated but because she has been sick and hasn't been able to be a normal member of society. My wife suffers with a milder form of my daughters illness. I have a mother in law who is a walking miracle, despite very severe respiratory complications, having survived a motor neuron diagnoses more than 25 yrs ago. I have a mother who had massive surgery a few years to remove a tumor on her pancreas leaving her immunity compromised without a spleen and now diabetic. Both mother and in mother law at 73 are placed in high risk categories for Covid-19.

With my fears so has my anger grown at the lack of leadership I see all around me. I am a numbers guy - I like data, I have spent the last 20 years pouring over data to help inform my decisions. We knew what we were facing weeks, months ago. We had enough reliable data coming in to know with even the most basic models that we were facing exponential growth of this disease unless we took dramatic action to stop or at least flatten the trajectory of its growth. However it requires leaders to make tough decisions. I have witnessed people in positions of authority truly make pathetic decisions but for me the tipping point has been our Australian Governments decision last night to keep schools open and their lack of urgency to crack down on this pandemic.

One thing I have learned in bringing up children with a partner is the need to speak with a united voice. The minute kids see their parents are not on the same page then they will use those differences to exploit the situation. 

Over the last few weeks as the seriousness of the situation became more and more apparent some people wanted to self isolate out of fear of spreading or catching the virus but their heroic efforts were seen by many as alarmist or childish. While I am not an anarchist or preaching anarchy I want to say that you cannot trust the government to look after your best interests. Unfortunately now in our time of need we see the true lack of leaders in our government, in our businesses, in our communities, in our peer group, in our families and scarily in our selves. We weren't all built to be leaders but at times like this we need to learn to make tough decisions for ourselves and our families as the consequences are too severe to leave vital decisions to bureaucrats or people who don't know your circumstances. 

I realize that what I am saying may sound like fear mongering. That is good. We have survived through time because of our G-d given instincts to protect ourselves and our families. The Central Banks and most of the financial industry will never tell you the full story, because the whole system is built on confidence and their ability to convey that tomorrow or the next day all will be well.

Goldman Sachs 10 days ago put out a 2nd Quarter US GDP number of -5% which was the most extreme at the time. They subsequently revised it down to -15% last week. Today I am seeing talk in the media of a potential -50% drop in GDP for the 2nd quarter. This is just one small example of how things are changing from bad, to more bad to much more bad. Friends it is really hard to know what to do at times like this, who do we believe?  

If there is one message I can convey is that you need to be scared. I am not saying to panic there is a difference. The world as we have known for the last 70 plus years has come to an end. There are tough times ahead. The economists making predictions are playing with numbers in a model. They are not taking the human suffering into account and how the change of mood is going to hang over us for years and decades to come in all manners of our life. This is not going to be a quick bounce back from a bad quarter of economic growth. We are going to be in semi lock down for months to come. The economic bailout packages being paraded out on the news are not going to solve the problem. Yes they will help but it will be at the margin, net net we are all going to suffer. 

I am not hearing enough war talk, I am hearing too much we will get through this. Yes we will get through it but lets not try and minimize the pain and suffering we are going to experience. I have had a headache for a week because I see pain and suffering from a world that is broken. I see families suffering from being cooped up in small confines getting on each others nerves. I see many families having to deal with grief from losing family members. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that it affects old people. As families we don't discriminate, we need the elderly in our lives, they teach us wisdom, they share memories with us, they teach us to be compassionate. 

We will get through this but it is going to take time, I am not writing to inspire you, I am writing this to try and share some reality. Bringing these emotions to the surface is important as it will help us in time heal the broken worlds inside of all of us. 

Stay safe and stay isolated as much as you can and lets all say a prayer for those health workers and people providing essential services to help us get through this painful scary time.