Thanks for the warm welcome and I’m looking forward to the conversations.

To address your comment, I think greed was surely a factor in this crisis as it has been in previous ones and will continue to be in the next ones to come. The “best and the brightest” had to know this was going to come to a stop. But the question becomes, did they push forward all the same because they were simply trying to “milk the cow all the way”, or was it because they were constantly being pushed to “hit the number”. The answer probably lies midway between the two.

My question is where has all the common sense gone. It’s easy to say these companies/people have none, but really…? Have they just plain lost it? Or do they just plain ignore it? Are they just nodding their heads to their bosses and saying “sure it can be done” or are they really just missing the big picture and thinking it can be done?

Accounting/finance/economics is probably my weakest point (although I love math – go figure), yet I have to wonder if we haven’t made it more difficult than it needs to be. Much like when the banks took advantage of “new accounting rules” and I sat and scratched my head and had to ask – “new accounting rules? I thought it went like this “+” means a gain and “-” means a loss. You take all your +s and subtract your -s and get a number. That’s what you made. Now take some of this and save it for a rainy day. Rinse and repeat.” I wish it was that simple, but it isn’t.

@Ines Urban Sprawl is a very good analogy. Good news is we don’t have to get stuck with “bad architecture” on this issue if we only focus on the basics.

@Danilo I’ll gladly accept that award and I want to thank the academy …

@Missy Never played Risk. Sign of my conservative nature, perhaps?

@Jason Right back at you. ::fist bump::

@Jay Definitely. I look forward to meeting you, Sir.

Hey, I’ll be in Houston July 22 for HAR’s “Social Media Summer Camp” — you coming Erion?

Welcome to AG. Nice adddition.

Starbucks was an unbelievable phenomenon that took the world by storm one uberpriced latte at a time.

Crap, thanks for reminding me how much I pay

::fist bump:: welcome to AG

Interesting to watch folks play that game, you buy too quick you loose.

And you get the quote of the day award with “There’s got to be a point where they will run out of
countries.” LOL