At times like this, even though we are supposedly gradually coming out of our recession, many businesses are quite sensibly looking nervously ahead, trying to be positive, but worried about “the bubble bursting”.
I personally believe, and I sincerely hope I am wrong, that Europe (including UK) is still to experience a massive implosion as the debt bubble bursts all over us, and availability of credit is severely restricted – this could be caused by all sorts of issues, whether it is Syria, Iran, Oil Price Hikes, but will have a devastating effect on confidence with a potential crash in property prices with the resulting impact on bank lending, and market prices.
Japan went through it 20 years ago, and it could be our turn – fingers crossed it does not happen.
But it might!
Europe is teetering on a knife-edge!
And what are you doing about it?
How are you preparing your business?
What I am seeing is business carrying on as though nothing is happening, apparently totally oblivious to the potential threat and possible impending destruction of their life styles.
If we dont have a crash – we have to have inflation – too much money has been pumped into the system to prevent that happening – which will mean higher interest rates.
With the level of personal and business borrowing in this country, higher interest rates will also be potentially “crippling” – so now is the time to massively reduce debt and increase liquidity where at all possible.
But businesses appear to be fiddling around with minutiae and not addressing the big cloud hovering over them.
This is a comfort zone – the comfort of activity even if it is irrelevant to the wider survival of the business – and I heard someone refer to this yesterday rather crudely, but quite emphatically, as “pole vaulting over mouse poo”
So pardon me if I use it on you, and ask you to check that you and your colleagues are not neglecting the “elephant in the room” that could be about to stamp on you as you are looking down at the “mouse poo”.