After placing the post on CNBC’s Rick Santelli, I kept looking around the internet and found that his rant really hit a nerve; both those that saw him as a saint and those who saw him as the guy with the pitchfork. The New York Times reported on some of the pros and cons to his comments, but as an entrepreneur his remarks really hit home for me. In my businesses, I always tried to manage prudently, not only for the sake of my own family, but also for the sake of my employee’s families. Politics aside, what troubles me most about the most recent mortgage bailout from the Obama administration, is that they’re rewarding folks who were doing the opposite of what entrepreneurs try to do…we try to manage the risks that we take. Sometimes entrepreneurs are wrongly seen as risk-takers. It’s my opinion that we’re not that at all…rather we try and see the risk and then manage it effectively for the sake of our company, our employees, and our stakeholders.
As I look at the people who risked everything they had by buying multiple homes so they could “flip” them, when I look at the folks who over mortgaged themselves by buying homes far too expensive, or worse yet, as I look at those who remortgaged their homes and pulled money out for vacations, cars or RVs…and now those of us who managed our businesses and our investments prudently will be responsible for bailing them out? Make no mistake, when we say the government is going to bail out these mortgage mess-holders, in fact we’re the ones who are going to be doing the bailing out. And like Rick Santelli…I’m not at all happy about doing it.
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