Flotsam:

There’s no particular reason for the title other than it amused me.

It’s a phrase I made up and have been generally using in conjunction with the latest fearmongering twat’s journalist’s piece on the current financial shenanigans. It seems like ninety-percent of these people have either been lobotomised or are deliberately trying to scare the shit out of people. Newsflash: you don’t need to scare people, we all get it: the world’s gone a bit shit.

Ironically, or not depending on your world view, many people might find the number of wars going on, the millions of starving and the fact the ice caps are melting quicker than you can ask for ice with that are reason enough for thinking this.* And all of those things were happening when we were all still footloose credit junkies.

The simple ugly truth, known to anyone with even the slightest rudimentary knowledge of economic history, is that markets do crash; they crash because just like every other human construction they are subject to error and human nature (greed, ego and poor memory). And, eventually, they go back up again.

Granted current events are happening faster than normal but hell: it’s the 21st century; everything is faster than it used to be. Granted this is a bad one (another point: the size of the trough is usually relational to the size of the peak) but it is just a moment in time, the world doesn’t actually stop (in the living and dying sense) because the markets freeze. Everyone needs to calm down. ‘kay?

Liquidity (the flow of money through the system) is what makes the whole thing work, confidence (the hydraulics) of the system is what powers the liquidity and fear is what bungs the pipes up. Like any plumbing this happens and the whole system has to be flushed before it works again but chucking more fear (as the press is doing) at the problem is not going to clear anything.

I may have carried the metaphor too far. You get the idea.

And before anyone jumps on me for not having skin in the game – I’m not sitting in some ivory tower here, I’m sitting in my largely bank owned terraced house nervously eyeing the shrinking advertising budgets that enable me to eat.

Short version: I’m in the shit along with everyone else and I haven’t worked for a bank a day in my life. But I promise you one thing you can do to make things get better: turn off the news, kick that fudgebucket into touch and do something fun.

It’s for the good of the economy, now pass the ice cream, fudge flavour naturally.

* Indeed I’m sure there are many other examples of the world going to shit that have nothing to do with the credit crunch.