Diana R. Sieger is the president of the Grand Rapids Commmunity Foundation. For more information, visit Diana's President's pages or view her biography.

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President's Point of View: The Blame Game

October 25, 2008

I found myself this past week wondering why Congress, the media and others are playing the blame game to find who is at fault for the credit and financial global meltdown. Okay - I understand we need to learn why the economic crisis is occurring so it won’t happen again. Frankly that line of thinking would be good IF our collective memory would kick in occasionally but that doesn’t seem to happen. We don’t seem to learn from past lessons and it seems that these lessons aren’t heeded decades later and are wiped clean from our memory!

It is necessary to find out if there has been any culpability of the part of the folks who have brought us to our knees. I understand that BUT …

…we seem to be consumed by the finger pointing that is playing out on the world stage! Alan Greenspan testified earlier this week admitting that he was surprised at the severity of the current global economic crisis. While our Congressional leaders and others are bound and determined to find the “culprit” and are taking the time to do just that, I trust that attention is also being paid to figuring out how to get us out of this deep hole!

I received an email from a colleague of mine who posted a question on one of the community foundation listservs asking if any of our investment consultants predicted this economic crisis as one of his Finance Committee volunteers wondered why the consultant community didn’t read the signs better. I am taking some license on that as I am only assuming that was going through the person’s mind.

Hmmm - perhaps that person should have asked that of our financial leaders two years ago - or four years ago - or … or … or! While there have been signs of this crisis, frankly I don’t think many people thought it was going to be this severe. Our investment consultant did advise us that the credit and housing situation would continue to impact investments some time ago.

But I still don’t understand why it is important to take precious time and energy right now to point fingers. I want to move forward and provide funds for projects that will help grow this community like the $500,000 investment we made in InnovationWorks a program of The Right Place, Inc! Like the investment we made in the building we bought and renovated over the past 10 months that is our new home. In this Heartside area, we believe in building the core of our city - investing for the future, and moving forward to strengthen the lives of all people in our grand community!

Philanthropy is always important and now it is especially important. I have faith that our community is up to the challenge to continue its support our area nonprofit community and the people served!