Page 4 - MS Year in Review 2020

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: THE THREAT OF

NUCLEAR WAR

For those people who were living during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threat of
Nuclear War was real and immediate. There were bomb shelters. Some people

responded by building family bomb shelters and storing foods and water for the
inevitable bomb and its aftermath. Schools had students practice getting under
their desks to avoid the bomb blast and fallout of the bomb.

As a college student at the time, my analysis of the situation led me to the
conclusion that Nuclear War between the USA and Russia would not happen. I
concluded that government of both nations was too smart and aware of the

consequences to let this catastrophe occur. So I simply went about my “business”
with no concern for this event. Fortunately, this assumption proved correct.

My lesson is that if you can’t control something or do anything about it, there is a

no point worrying about it. There was a later movie that came to the same
conclusion. Its title was: “Dr. Strangelove: or how I learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb.” Pejoratively, one could call this the “Ostrich strategy.” But it

worked quite well for me at that time.

THE VOLKER INTEREST RATE CRISIS AND THE

1
RECESSION OF 1980-82

With inflation rampant in the US, Paul Volker, then head of the Federal Reserve, the
FED raised the prime rate rose to 21.5% in 1981. This, in turn, lead to the 1980–
1982 recession, in which the national unemployment rate rose to over 10%.

At that time, I was relatively early in my consulting career, and I was working with

a number of companies in a variety of industries doing organizational development.

1 Under Paul Volker, then head of the Federal Reserve, the FED raised the prime rate rose to 21.5%
in 1981, which helped lead to the 1980–1982 recession, in which the national unemployment rate
rose to over 10%.

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