View from a regular chap Or Another point of view The financial crisis? What financial crisis? As I wandered into the local Sainsbury to do my meagre shopping it seemed to me there was little evidence of a financial crisis. People were stuffing trolleys full of stuff from bagels to baguettes, admittedly the champagne wasn’t exactly flowing off the shelves but the place was well attended and shopping trolleys were spilling over. It is also interesting to me that “Call of Duty – Modern Warfare hit $400 in sales in 24 hours!!! That’s hardly a recession type purchase is it? We shall see what happens over Christmas 2012 but I doubt Mr Kipling will stop making his mince pies. Incidentally the same owners as Smith and Wesson handguns. Buns and Guns spring to mind, however we digress. Nor shall we see Mr Fosters breweries close shop for the winter. I also went to put petrol in my car and there was a queue of at least twenty cars lining up. If we were that badly off then none of the above would be so obvious. If we are willing to blow £30 on a video game then the Euro is safe, unless you happen to be Greek or Italian, or Spanish that is!! It is however hardly surprising that the worlds finances are in such a mess. When you see the arrogance of the bankers and financiers waffling on and on about austerity measures and pulling in ones belt. Easy to say from the back of your Roller, most of them couldn’t pull in a belt if they used a JCB. “Oh dahling, we really must cut back on the Bolly, maybe just one case a night, eh wot, pass the caviar deah!!” Personally I think its all a load of Tosh!! The housing market is controlled by estate agents who tell us what the property is worth and like sheep we all fall in line. It has little to do with the economy and much more to do with hype. Every few years we see the same thing, there is a property crash followed by a property boom, boom, n crash, crash n boom!! It happened in Thatcher’s era. We were all told that more belt tightening was necessary, then some guys invaded the Falkland’s and all of a sudden, boom!! We all got nationalistic and low and behold we were all coming out of the recession and property prices went stratospheric because we were all told, the economy is back on track guys, go spend. Banks gave us credit cards with near galactic spending limits and mortgage companies were dishing out 100% mortgages. Sorry but I think it’s all bollocks. There is no such thing as a recession!! Swallow that one Mr Cameron. Economies are like climate change, or perhaps even global warming. They heat up and cool down. We get the occasional storm and it invariably blows over. There will always be the doom-mongers who want us all to jump ship, it just means that those ‘who have’ get bigger boats! Countries like Greece should never have been allowed to join the Euro, they all sit around eating olives, farting and drinking Ouzo, hardly a recipe for improving your GDP is it? Then we have our Italian friends, of course they are
in debt, it all went into the mafia’s pockets, and Berlesconi’s of course. Hardly surprising then that they can’t pay their debts, go figure. Corrupt governments don’t give a flying toss about saving the economy, they just want to grab as much as they can while its available. It’s a national pastime in countries like India and China and their economies are actually growing. In these places the huge disparity between rich and poor is bordering on cosmic. Yet we continue to invest in them and buy their produce, as crap as it often is, and copied, and stolen, and made by child labour, need I go on. The rant of a normal bloke I admit, but it has a ring of truth doe sit not. Greed, corruption, hype and market forces drive the economy, of course it will go through periods of bad weather, but above the clouds is always sunshine. No point in telling everyone that the sun will fall from the sky because it’s raining!! Buy an umbrella and wait it out. Have a nice day and enjoy shooting people and blowing up stuff with your Playstation.