Change is a pain. C’mon, admit it. Unless you’re one of those hardy, adventurous souls who’s currently stuffing your backpack for a long trip to the Arctic – oh, yes, after quitting your job and kissing your family goodbye, that is. The rest of us, sad to say, prefer the comfort of driving the same route home from work most days. Even if we hate to admit it.

Well, here’s news. Obama and McCain are mouthing the right words. “Change is coming!” Etc. Only thing is, the changes they’re promising probably aren’t the biggest curves ahead. Don’t spend your tax break yet.

No, the changes ahead will be more profound. Our basic confidence in the great economic engine isn’t gone, but it’s shaken. People are actually thinking about (next time) buying homes they can afford (and heat), about the merits of state colleges for their own offspring, about getting a smaller car, wearing a sweater (mittens??) at home this winter, and perhaps even buying less stuff in case times get worse.

The amazing thing? This may be all for the good. In our rush to trash our planet, we in the U.S. have consumed oil and gas, cows and fish, plastic, and ice cream (oops, that’s just me) at a truly alarming rate. What we’re seeing now is LIMITS. Limits that will prod us toward changes we’ve resisted, as a nation, as businesses and as individuals.

As in…

-All that money Wall Street was flashing around? Lots of it was fake, a bubble, a myth. The way it was “made” was something no one really understood, and now much of it is gone – actually GONE.

-Peak oil? How many of us have skimmed the articles and turned the page? Yes, Virginia, we will run out.

-Spending as fast as we earn? Oops. Not so smart.

I don’t think the American way of life is doomed, or that we’ll be living in huts in the dark anytime soon. Instead, I think we’ll need to look at how money, honest money, is actually generated and at how our incredible inventiveness can help us come up with technologies and systems for a more sustainable, perhaps more sensible, world.

It could be fun. Really.

Prescient words?

“… because it will not last forever.” Billy Joel wasn’t singing about the U.S. financial system in that melancholy song. But I’m guessing a few investors and small business owners are biting their nails this morning. We’re watching history happen, and the few who rule and get extraordinarily rich hold a big piece of our future in their fingers. As Congress votes on a bailout, voters continue to barrage their elected officials with angry, anxious calls and emails begging them not to reward greedy Wall Street, and not to allow financial CEOs to collect huge golden parachutes as they depart their floundering firms. Many people don’t want this bailout, thinking it “rewards Wall Street.” So now our elected representatives, who to their credit have been hammering away to create a passable plan, must fear for their jobs if they vote for it.

Our grandchildren will read about this crisis. Will they say that “ordinary Americans” and elected representatives were unable to stomach helping out the fat cats and thus led us to a depression? Will our grandchildren learn that citizens weren’t able to understand that when financial institutions crumble, one after one, legions of jobs are lost, retirements are ruined, families can’t get loans for homes or college, and we experience a deep recession or even depression – the kind we’ve all hoped won’t happen in our lifetimes?

Or will we face up, pay the piper (sure, with oversight and safeguards in our plan) and start cleaning up the mess created by the financial wizards and Gods of the Universe? I opt for the bailout. Painful as it is.

In business, as in life, not having a clue what you're doing often ends poorly.

One of the many lessons one could reasonably take away from the Wall Street/Main Street/Bailout debacle is this: It’s dangerous not to understand the intricacies of your work. And if you’re a boss, and you don’t understand these intricacies, you’d better make sure that the people you rely on are on the same page as you. On Wall Street, risk is the name of the game, of course. To a certain extent, risk is inherent in every business enterprise. But the ambient dangers of any business venture (economic factors, competitive pressures, trends that affect the need for your product or service, and all the rest) are sufficient without piling ignorance on top. In the financial sector, we’ve seen a rather pervasive degree of ignorance of factors including:

-What happens when virtually incomprehensible mortgage-backed securities behave badly

-Why a housing bubble might just maybe burst someday

-Why the likely “depth to the bottom” is going to be really, really embarrassing. To say the least.

Now, turning our attention away from Wall Street… the last decade has challenged many businesspeople, especially veterans (yeah, that means old people, like, you know, 40). For many of us, changes in technology alone – whether in computer science, medicine, biotech or the like – have meant long evenings of research or, in some cases, toying with the temptation of early retirement (like, you know, at 40). The fact is that, when managing any career that matters, each of us has to keep our radar turned on, our eyes and ears sharp and our focus firmly on understanding the changing business/tech/financial concepts that, let’s face it, we are duty-bound to master.

It’s been nearly impossible to tear my eyes away from the computer as of late, because the news is as engaging as… a train wreck. We have financial giants on their knees begging for federal assistance. Plus candidates wriggling to get into new, advantageous positions vis a vis each day’s hot issues.

Gumby knows how to bend with the times.

Well, the candidates take it a little far, and tend to be transparent at times. Since yesterday, McCain and Obama have become deeply, deeply concerned about regulating Wall Street. Also, McCain has shrugged off his “experience matters” overcoat to embrace the clearly untested Palin. Obama is sweating to shed his image as an “elitist” and become dearer to the working folks whose votes he so badly needs.

Sure, it’s nauseating to watch. (I said “train wreck”, did I not?) At the same time, I think our illustrious candidates have a lesson for Wall Street.

Think fast! Act quickly! Change when conditions demand it. And most of all, stay agile. Sinking behomoths like AIG are simply too massive and sleepy to respond promptly when market conditions demand.

Responsiveness is one area in which smaller businesses, or larger ones with smaller, “independent” units, have the winning edge. Although maintaining more credibility than a politician…. is good too!

Goldman Sachs posted a profit this morning. It was 71 percent lower than the profit for the same quarter last year, to be sure, but it was a profit, in stark contrast to other investment banks who’ve precipitated the Great Skid on Wall Street.

The AP headline read: Goldman posts worst quarter since going public

Not: Goldman posts lower-than-expected profit

Or: Goldman remains in the black last quarter

The selected AP headline works well to add to the doom and gloom, doesn’t it? I’m not advocating being a PollyAnna, but it’s smart to keep a wary eye on the news media which, after all, is in the business of selling its wares. Big, exciting and even horrifying headlines sell. But if we care about our economy, perhaps we could position “somewhat bad news that could be a lot worse” as something else than yet another financial disaster.

It’s great to know that Alan Greenspan recognizes a financial crisis when he sees one. Speaking about the mess that began with the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market and that’s now highlighted by the demise of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch and the woes of AIG, he informs us that this is a big one, “probably a once in a century event”, that will likely include the failure of more big financial firms. “There’s no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I’ve seen, and it is still not resolved,” he assures us.

Seems to me that Greenspan should be more than a Monday morning quarterback. Such as… responsible in part for our current problems. Didn’t he help inflate the housing bubble by supporting too-low short-term rates  for too long?  Greenspan has said the problem lay not in the loans, but in their repackaging as securities and subsequent sale to investors, but c’mon. Why couldn’t he see that the policies that encouraged reckless lending would come to roost somewhere up the Wall Street food chain?

I’m increasingly disappointed in our “experts,” from Wall Street to the White House, on the election trail and beyond.

It occurs to me that the people who know the most about the financial markets – presumably high-ranking investment/brokerage executives and portfolio managers, Wall Street traders and the like – don’t know very much at all.

This is evidenced by the ostrich-like dealings with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (how many investment professionals kept stacking layers on that flimsy house of cards? How many mutual funds were still heavily invested during the most recent nose-dive?) It was surely feasible to predict this debacle – several years ago, my own father, a retired physics teacher, saw it coming and completely divested his Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae holdings. But the pros couldn’t or wouldn’t face reality. Are they so dumb that short-term greed led to the current market crisis?

Or maybe Wall Street is suffering from mental instability. The wild-eyed thinking that fosters rocketing from exhilaration to panic and back (the Dow is up 2.5% one day, down that much the next) tells us that few traders are thinking much beyond that day’s news flash.

We “small investors” are frequently advised to sit tight and play for the long term. How come the professionals operate in blind reflex thinking?

Could it be that financial market professionals don’t know what in heck the future holds and run scared every day?

That’s comforting. And it affects us all.