El-Erian to Policy Makers: Be Like Steve Jobs

Pimco’s mouthpiece Mohamed El-Erian has a pretty good op-ed over at that new CNN project Global Public Square.  El-Erian is convinced that only a rapid and uncompromising policy response from the political community can keep us from succumbing to stall speed.  While he admits that the complexities are nearly impassable, he does offer up a pretty good example of someone who ate complexity for breakfast and spit out solutions…

US policymakers in the last few weeks have been more interested in pointing fingers at Europe and China than in recognizing and responding to the paradigm shifts that are at the root of the country’s economic problems and mounting social challenges.

This is where the insights of Steve Jobs, one of the world’s best innovators and entrepreneurs, come in. Jobs did more than navigate paradigm shifts; he essentially created them. He was a master at converting the complicated into the simple; and, rather than being paralyzed by complexity, he found new ways to deconstruct and overcome it. Teamwork was an obligation, not a choice. And he eschewed the search for the single “big bang” in favor of aiming for multiple breakthroughs.

Underlying it all was a willingness to evolve – a drive for perfection through experimentation. Moreover, he excelled at selling to audiences worldwide both his vision and his strategy for realizing it.

So far, America’s economic policymakers have fallen short on all of these fronts. Rather than committing to a comprehensive set of urgently-needed reinforcing measures, they seem obsessed with the futile search for the one “killer app” that will solve all of the country’s economic problems. No surprise that they have yet to find it.

Source:

America at Stall Speed (CNN)