A new year — always a good time, when you hopefully get that feeling of hope, a fresh slate and new beginnings. I’m struggling with it a bit this year though, as I can’t help but feel we’re going to be in for more of the same… more uncertainty.
Personally, I’m not convinced at all that we’re anywhere near out of the woods with the global economic crisis, or even heading in the right direction.
I feel that while there is indeed some element of recovery, that being a slow return in consumer confidence, I’m still concerned that we have a largely artificially created rapid recovery on our hands, which is serving the short term gains and relief that the world is baying for, but might ultimately lead to longer term tears. And it is shored up on very shaky, thin posts.
Consumers psyches are being uplifted by news of bailouts, stock markets on the rise again, interest rate cuts, etc, and so some spending is returning. But is our global money and economic system underpinned by sound fundamentals? I fear not, not by a long shot. There is still much imbalance hidden in the system that must eventually come to book. Things have gone too well too fast, and there’s too much vapour money about, and far too little real value creation or retained value to back it all up.
And we have a remarkably short memory — it won’t be long before the sort of financial games and excesses that led to the crash start to re-appear again at some point. The current upswing in stock markets might be a clue already… another baseless race trading in near-imaginary things, fueled by every other traders mentality and the global money PR campaign?
That said, for this year I remain “cautiously optimistic”. Human beings are remarkable in that they tend to persevere, and so we shall. And for smart businesses and business people, problems always create opportunity. How this affects the high-tech and VC sectors remains to be seen, but here’s hoping that this year at least goes more smoothly and is less disruptive to us all!
2010 has to be the year of small business.
The unemployment numbers continue to rise forcing people to innovate. The increased interest in the venture capital sector, the banks throwing money at their SME offerings and pressure from govt. to step up lending to the lower end of the market – think it actually bodes well for our economy and employment outlook in the long run.