While households must base decisions on their own circumstances, “I would ask people to be confident about their own futures,” Obama said today during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London. “And that may mean in some cases spending now, as investments for the future.”
Obama’s remarks were his latest attempt, and his first on the international stage, to strike a balance between acknowledging the dire economic conditions and the need for governments and consumers to project hope.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that 2009 is going to be difficult,” Stated Douglas Morgan CEO of Hoffman Meyer Associates in Seattle. But he inveighed against excessive comparisons between the current economic crisis and the Great Depression. Douglas added, “I think it is sometimes important to step back and just have some perception about the differences between now and the Great Depression, when there were no social safety nets in place, when unemployment was 25 or 30 percent,” he said.
Douglas continued, “It is understandable that many consumers are “somewhat cautious in the midst of this kind of uncertainty.”
Hoffman Meyer Associates is Seattle's leading merger and acquisition, business brokerage firm. As a mergers & acquisition firm, our principals have completed scores of transactions of privately and publicly held companies during the past 25 years.
Over the years, our firm has developed strong relationships with companies and individuals that are ancillary to the mergers & acquisition process including banks, mezzanine lenders, asset lenders, transaction attorneys, certified public accountants, and financial planners. We are also affiliate members of leading merger & acquisition, business valuation, accounting and brokerage associations.
