Blog 200812311200

Wednesday 31^st December 2008, Greenport, Long Island, New York.

So here we are, at the gateway to another year – what will be the same what will be different?

One thing that will definitely be the same will be the retrospective navel gazing over the past year. Dredging up things we may well rather wish to forget and their regurgitation on TV and the Internet. So I won't do any of that.

Looking forward – what will the year 2009 bring? Certainly more recession/depression and lots of pain for many folks as they loose their jobs and houses. This wont affect the richest bankers who have too much money to feel the downturn and anyway will probably be getting a big wad as their reward for their negligence and greed which lead to this chaos in the first place [sorry to any of you that fall into this category]. More companies will collapse and mergers will take place to safeguard others from collapsing – leading to more job losses of course. But hopefully by the end of the year there will be light at the end of the tunnel as this down cycle turns round. It will turn round of course – everything that goes down must come up, eventually.

There will be more talk of it never happening again [it will of course]. Slowly most people will forget about the downturn, get overexcited by the upturn, and it will all happen again!

I wonder if there will be sufficient learning form these happenings? Gas/petrol WILL go back to $4/ £1.5 per gallon again eventually – it is just a question of time – how long will it take? It will go back to these prices for a simple reason – market forces. As the demand for anything outstrips the supply it will inevitably go up in price. Its a fact of life. But will the nations prepare for this now in light of 2008? Will new sources of energy be tapped in an adequate way to mitigate the next hike in oil prices? I am afraid I am very sceptical that this will happen before the next energy crisis, the capital investment in the new energy sources will become uneconomic again, now the energy prices have gone back down.

Will there be good cheer in 2009? I am sure there will. There will be the success and triumph over challenges, both on a corporate and individual level. My challenge will be, as always, to manage the prolonged mental disorder that I suffer from. This is kept at bay by meds but surfaces from time to time to try to overwhelm me. From my introduction to twitter and the blogosphere through Stephen Fry I have found several blogs from people who suffer even more than I do. It has been heartening to see how they have benefited from the use of blogs to expunge some of the darker moments.

Fortunately over the last three weeks I have had lots of time for the blogosphere because I have been on vacation. I am not yet certain what will happen when I get back to reality next week. That is IF I get back to reality since it had started to snow heavily here in Greenport. We are supposed to leave from JFK tomorrow. As it is at the moment, I am not even sure if we will get to the airport!

Finally, may I wish you all a happy new year's celebration and not too much of a hangover on New Years Day.

Happy Day Year everybody.

Eric.