We are not just living in interesting times we are actually part of a world that is changing by the day. This leads to that old proverb and problem that we often cannot see the wood for the trees.
In the financial markets the scale of the changes that have occurred over the last six months is truly daunting. The refinancing of the corporate world, that was all the rave over the last 24 months, leading to such old dependables as GM declaring bankruptcy, has switched to concerns about the viability of nations themselves.
Countries have been forced to scramble for funding, as their own balance sheets collapsed with the same regularity as their banking systems. Having now been “bailed out” they now find it virtually impossible to meet the terms they grasped at like drowning men. The success stories of the nineties, such as Ireland the Celtic Tiger have been shown to be a house of cards, built on debt and an unsustainable business model. Greece, Portugal and many others teeter on the brink and yet the Euro strengthens and the larger stock markets plod on holding their ground and buoyed by the improving earnings that their companies continue to produce, strange indeed!
It is always amazing just how resilient the markets are and how seemingly irrelevant dips in their performance seem when looked at in the future, but then hindsight has always been the most perfect science.
On another front the human race is dealing on a daily basis with weather and natural forces that would have seemed extreme and unusual, only ten years ago. Massive earthquakes that lead to mind numbingly huge Tsunami’s. Nature showing her might and releasing her power that daunts us and demonstrates the fallibility of our own power sources, particularly that generated from nuclear power stations.
The latest mass of tornado’s and hurricanes, that are now seemingly the norm where a decade ago they would have been so unusual. Should our eye not really be on this ball, rather than our day to day issues? Just how destructive and powerful will the forces of nature be and whether global warming is a natural phenomenon or man caused, is rather irrelevant, if it is going to happen.
It is great that my children switch off the lights, or ask me to drive slower, it is green and cosy but how will that really counteract the building of one new coal fired power station every week, in China alone?
The human being has the ability to never cease to amaze. Just when decades of imposed dictatorship seemed to be so well drilled and imposed, that there seemed there would never be any change, a spark and a desire for freedom exploded!
Dictators, be they military, royal or religious now shiver in their palaces and “compounds’’, as their people say no more and demand a voice. Teachers, plumbers and doctors have become their own freedom fighters. Many innocent people have lost their lives, not just the young and middle aged men who have taken up arms for the first time in their lives, but also their mothers, sisters and wives, butchered by high powered weapons or shot in their homes by soldiers and henchmen paid for by evil men clinging to their ill gotten fortunes.
In the middle of all this upheaval and change we go to work and or carry on with our own lives. Countries are crashing, Mother Nature is furious and the people of the Arab world are fighting for their lives, we fret about the petrol price!
We have a strange perspective, but as human beings one thing is for certain, life is never dull!