The commentary below is merely the first entry I made in this new medium offered by Google. 

Since then I have written numerous comments and articles on various subjects to which I have placed links in the left hand column. In addition I have also facilitated, by means of links access to other sites where I have published some information and/or views.  

Happy reading 

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The end of the Financial Year

I suspect that people who are in the game of buying and selling shares will be having a 'knees up' in their offices (or more likely at some expensive and salubrious night spot) celebrating the fabulous financial year that has been.

A market that has reached something like a 30% growth capping some three earlier years of financial bliss where the growth rates have been close to the 20% mark.

A world in which the industrial developments of China, India and a number of other burgeoning economies have demanded resources at unprecedented rates and where fortunes have been made or lost in unprecedented time.

"You've got to be in it to win it - mate!" is probably the slogan of the day.

Edging on my subconscious, from somewhere in my childhood, there is a little story about carefree animals that frolic in the sunshine of the summer and do not heed warning about the coming winter. Warnings about the need to make preparations, to store resources for the time when the weather changes and the good times disappear.

I am happy for those who have made a fortune and I am sad for those who have lost one.

I am even more concerned about those who could not participate in all of the ballyhoo that has been going on because they did not have anything to participate with - money to invest or indeed to lose.

This last category, seems to include the majority of people everywhere. 

People who inhabit this space are the ones who work solidly through the year at whatever jobs their abilities, skills, talents and opportunities have provided for them and who never seem to have the ability to get their heads above the demands and costs of the basic essentials like food, shelter and clothing.

I fear for them even more as the next year looks like it could be filled with even greater price rises for energy, food, and probably clothing.

Accommodation prices are already at unprecedented levels and more and more people can not afford to own their own home, and where renting a place to live, is either unaffordable, unavailable or so far from transport and work options as to make them if not unaffordable impractical. Serviceable clothing is currently cheap - especially as much of what is available is from China. Food is not all that cheap, but you can get bargains from time to time. 

As the financial year comes to a close - we have governments announcing that they will charge more for energy. The cost of transport - based as it is on the cost of fuel will be much higher in the next year, the cost of housing is already close to or at the 'unaffordable' range and if the cost of clothing and other essentials like food rises while wages remain at current levels, the majority I have referred to above can only increase.

So by all means let's make hay while the sun shines - but let's all prepare for "winter" as well!

ADDENDUM - August 2007

What a difference a few months make. Have a look at my prediction at the end of June of this year and then compare and contrast what I said then with what is happening NOW with a melt down in the stock market, the injection of hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy to try and keep things liquid and just wait for the next few weeks (or months) to see the rest of the predictions come true. 

Did you squirrel away a tidy sum to help you over the 'winter'? It may be too late to start now but if I was handing out advice - which of course I am not qualified to do - then I would advise getting quickly out of debt (to avoid the interest rate rises that are BOUND to follow and have some loose cash handy to take advantage of the bargains that are likely to abound in the new world AFTER the shake up of the mortgage and stock market debacles of the last few weeks.