Enough, Already

How much is enough?

Looks like the answer to that question is in for a makeover.

A few years ago, when I was in radio news, I covered a speech by actor Edward James Olmos to an audience of high school students, and it left an indelible impression. In a lesson about human nature, Olmos told the students that he was being paid $10 million for his role in an upcoming movie. That probably sounds like chump change today -- perhaps even to him. His message to the students was, there’s never enough. “If they pay you $5, you want $10,” he said. “If it’s $100, you want $1,000. If it’s $10,000, you want a million.” The point being, there’s no such thing as “enough” when it comes to human nature. But at some point, we all have to define the word for ourselves. Typically, if we don’t come up with the right answer, life gives it to us.

A few years ago – actually about 20 now – I thought my credit card interest rate was too high and I was shopping around for something better. There was a little bank in the South that got a reputation for offering the lowest rate in the country. Problem was, you had to qualify for it, and I quickly realized that I just couldn’t  – their income standards were much too high for me. That southern bank was Wachovia.

This past week, on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money show on CNBC, he talked about the once-proud American Express, reminiscing about the time when the only cards they issued were the kind where you had to pay off your balance in full every month  -- no exceptions. When you flashed an American Express card, people knew instantly about your standing in life.

Then, Cramer said, the company started issuing credit cards – the kind you didn’t have to pay off every month, and that became a major part of their business. Of course, their business grew – but at what price? Now, he said, there is a lot of “toxic waste” on Amex’s books, and the company is a shell of its former self.

After I left radio, I went into the newspaper business. Newspaper companies were used to having dominant positions in local markets and making enormous profits, but now many are in trouble, because those profits aren’t there any more, due to fierce competition from the Web. The newspaper conglomerates whose business models are based on the traditionally huge percentages of profit are having to live with less, and because of their outstanding loans, some of them just can’t do it.

The current economic collapse is forcing huge corporations and kitchen-table budgeters alike to take a hard look at that little word enough. It’s best summed up by a line from that Oliver Stone movie Wall Street, when Charlie Sheen says to Michael Douglas, playing the ruthless Gordon Gecko, “How many yachts can you ski behind?”

There, now I’ve said it.