Accord Advisory Group

January 28, 2009 is a “snow day” in New York: school is out (kids whoop!), New York City’s arcane “alternate side of the street parking” rules are suspended. Cross-town buses creep through Central Park. The harsh winter weather also has its delights: the dogs sniff the snow in curiosity, the cross-country skiers intrepidly take on Riverside Park.

And the whiff of Spring is in the air, Obama Spring, the buds, covered in snow but resolute. Even as the papers report John Thain’s final Merrill excesses—- Versailles antiques,big bonuses, or Citi’s now-cancelled corporate jet (it takes awhile for the news to filter up the corporate ladder, where the perspective is ‘can they really be serious?’— reference the CEO’s of the Big 3 Automakers, and their initial private-jet landing in Congress last Fall), another trend becomes discernable: a nation curating itself!

A nation curating itself. The passing of the Gilded Corporate Jet-Age. A symbolic page-turning to: The Obama Spring.

We still don’t know where the money will go, or who shall profit: but the categories are beginning to emerge: Education!; Healthcare! Infrastructure! Reports begin to flow on what doesn’t work (and its not just Ponzi Schemes in declining markets). As interest groups compete for cash, they present their cases, and the presentations reflect their needs for change: what’s not working. The first step in curating is spreading out the elements to consider the big picture.

So, in the press of billions, trillions, to be distributed, the first buds of Obama Spring suggest areas for improvement: not simply a greedy windfall, pork-barrell or “Christmas Tree” but the beginnings of revelation of what doesn’t work for so many. The American Society of Civil Engineers is issuing its infrastructure report card. D grades reflect borderline failure. But the revelation of failure is in the service of repair!

So, like the villagers in the StoneSoup story, we’re beginning to reveal what we’ve got: and that’s a hopeful step in action rather than words: pretty fast only one week after Inauguration.

Its been a long, cold, lonely winter…..
Here comes the sun?

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