The Engine

I've been asked a lot recently "Why so much economy and politics in your blogs? I mean dude your supposed to write about softball". The answer can be found in every new post I send out: "It's more than just a game"

I'm a little sicker than most as I see a lot of parallels between softball-life, and the recent unprecedented political/economic issues in our country clearly impact the readers of this page. So let's get down to business as I have no time to play around, everyone knows I've always prided myself as softball's most purest, rawest, and hardest known artist, and when I see the game in a state of 911 I write a story to promote awareness and inspire thought. One such parallel that I currently see between both worlds is the importance of Confidence.

Confidence is the engine that makes an athlete and an economy go. Some people call confidence mojo, unfortunately, America and most Americans, have lost their mojo. It doesn't matter if your a player or not, most can relate to a slump, http://softballinsider.blogspot.com/2008/08/sex-slump-comparison.html and a lack of confidence. No matter how much talent you have, without Confidence, 
http://softballinsider.blogspot.com/2007/04/sixth-tool.html there is nothing.

Two of America's biggest CEO's John Stumpf (Well's Fargo) and Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan Chase)  "think the No. 1 challenge today in America is confidence. We have a confidence deficiency," Our mojo has been visibly shaken by the following :

• Despite unemployment falling in half of U.S. states last month, the National joblessness remains above 9 percent
• Main Street continues to battle a sunken housing market. Growth prospects aren't all that promising.
• Despite strong corporate earnings stocks were plummeting until recently,"It's crazy how much the markets dropped in two days, considering that the data of the U.S. economy has actually looked pretty good," 
• For much of the summer, investors were worried that the U.S. economy was on the verge of another recession.The Federal Reserve said Wednesday the economy was likely to expand modestly over the next two years. But Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke cautioned that the pace of economic growth will likely be "frustratingly slow."

Loose lending and other abuses by many banking institutions contributed heavily to the meltdown and it took taxpayer-funded bailouts to salvage the economy. Millions of homeowners are struggling to pay their mortgage and the housing market is glutted with repossessed homes. Then there's the foreclosure documentation scandal. "If you are the average American citizen, you had to be looking at what happened and saying to Wall Street, 'What happened? I thought you guys were smart,'

People are hurting.

I worked on Wall Street. I thought I was smart. I am currently begging for work.
 I am hurting.

If you want to break a slump or strengthen your Confidence, step number one is to take control of your self and your actions. You have to be open to change and new thinking. Sometimes you have to unlearn what you have learned and take a multi-pronged approach, tackling different issues one step at a time.

Dimon recommends taking control with  a new "Marshall Plan," that would fix the national economy and get people working again. One of the first places to start, he said, is fixing an antiquated tax code. Major companies and small businesses are paralyzed by uncertainty because of future tax policy and pending regulation. I agree, we need to create advantages for starting and maintaining existing business because it will restore confidence in entrepreneurs and get the economic engine going again.

 Confidence is the engine, time to make changes to rev it up