….a post one can keep going back to…..all the best in the New Year…..Your posts are gems….a touch of Class every time……

“”A Happy New Year isn’t likely for the economy

‘As Stephen King, the chief economist at HSBC puts it, “the excess liquidity of recent years has gone down the plughole. In its place is a credit squeeze,” which indicates “a financial system in crisis.”

‘This credit crunch – the most important economic development in 2007 – means that banks are hanging on to their cash and have become more cautious both in who they lend to and how much they want to lend.

‘This year, central banks like the Bank of Canada have been concerned primarily with injecting liquidity into the financial system in order to prevent a financial collapse. A liquidity crisis occurs when financial institutions cannot generate immediate cash to meet their obligations because the assets they hold cannot be quickly converted to cash.’ “”

======================

Comment: Storm clouds have been building for years; people for various reasons lost the ability to ‘read the clouds.’ And so, we are facing a big storm, largely the public is unprepared. Only a few years after banks were allowed to step outside traditional banking and enter the brokerage and insurance businesses, these latter two areas could become giant albatrosses around the banks’ necks.

Well, there is alot more that could be written. John Galt, bless his soul, has written over at his site that we should educate our near and dear. Really, just how to do that is a big question. ‘A prophet is despised only in his own country and in his own house.’ [Matthew 13:57, New Jerusalem Bible] For many, having lived all or most of their lives in a period of generally rising prosperity, it is outside experience and therefore imagination imo to think about the ‘what happens next thing’ if the fearless leaders were merely Syrens singing us to our doom, or even that they could do such a thing.

Now that the global financial climate is warming up, is it simply the warm autumn before the storm of deflationary winter?

This coming year will bring challenges, and I wish all goodwill that the character and other personal qualities needed by each of us, and our leaders, will be found in sufficient quantities to steward our longsuffering world to better times. May each of us come closer to a true relationship with that part of Eternity within us which is our Guide and Counsellor. May we be thankful for the good in our lives, and may we live in peace. TQ