“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.”

This widely quoted opening line to Rudyard Kipling’s timeless poem, “If”, advises us not panic in times of trouble, but many people would have been well served to heed those words during the last boom.
Almost everybody thought that money was growing on trees and was theirs for the plucking; speculating nonsensically and getting involved in affairs they knew very little about, consuming preposterously far beyond their means. People were jeopardising the future of their children, and putting the economic and political strengths of their nations in grave danger by betting on this boom never ending. If they’d thought logically, they would have recognised that this “growth” was unsustainable . . . and they would have ignored the hype.
It is in our nature to want to prosper, and to prosper quickly. As a result, we willfully blinkered ourselves and accepted the appealing mirage ahead.  Putting in hard work is usually not fun and, by definition, it’s not easy.  But it has always been necessary for success and somehow this was forgotten during the pre-crisis boom years. The temptation to cut corners was made more difficult to resist when vast numbers of other people drank the same Kool-Aid -  “making” buckets of money, living like rock stars, losing their heads.
Imagine a pool filled with sharks. The first person to jump in is brave (but he’s made sure that he has the shark repellent and doesn’t have any cuts on his feet).  The next few people,  seeing that guy enjoying himself, also take most of the necessary steps to avoid being eaten. At a certain point there are enough people in the pool that passersby forget the dangers and jump in. Not only have they forgotten the sharks, but they have forgotten that they can’t swim.  The sharks get hungry and go into a frenzy as soon as somebody gets a bloody nose. Everybody swims for the sides, but many get eaten.  Some survive because they were well-prepared, but many needed the lifeguard.  Everybody is traumatised.
Not only do people now avoid that pool, knowing the dangers, but many have become somewhat hydrophobic.  Although they might take a bath, swimming is out of the question. The exhausted lifeguard, assuring everyone that the water is fine, lacks credibility. To use a cliché: “Once bitten, twice shy”.
Although the majority of people aren’t swimming, most wistfully recall the days of doing so. They were happy in that pool.  They want to get back in, but can’t.  With time and some therapy, people may overcome their fears.  All therapists try to help their patients cope with their mistakes; good ones uncover the underlying causes and teach their patients how to avoid repeating them.
Kind doctors make poor healers; to strengthen our economy on the long term, some difficult truths will have to be accepted. Screaming and yelling should not alter the doctor’s decision.

It is worth remembering that many people should NOT have been in that pool in the first place. For the sake of our economies, as much as those people getting back in the pool would provide a quick fix, let us hope they don’t. Or at least that swimming lessons are required. The lifeguard can’t handle another fiasco.