3 posts tagged “economy”
Good news: Many companies' recruitment freezes are already starting to thaw. Meanwhile, Jayne has been getting a surprising number of replies to the email she's been sending to candidates:
'Despite all the gloom and doom in the media, our consultants are at the coal face of recruitment and are reporting a much more positive outlook for January and the year ahead. The indications are that many of our clients will be recruiting quite aggressively in the new year and that the current slowdown in recruitment is seasonal as much as anything else.
In light of this we recommend that if you do plan to keep an eye out for fresh challenges next year, you beat the January rush and register your updated details with HTS asap. We'll then get in touch to discuss anything that matches your skills, experience and preferences...'
Candidates on our database who haven't been in touch for ages are emailing to express appreciation for this glimmer of positivity. People are starving for a bit of good news, it seems.
I'm starting to suspect that the economy is a sort of phantom summoned by the collective wizardry of the population's beliefs and assumptions about the health of our national finances. Confidence - a mere mental state, last time I checked - feeds it; lack of confidence makes it wither. If nobody had ever thought that the economy was in such trouble, it might not have ended up in such trouble. So perhaps it is time for us to treat the economy (and the jobs market, by extension) as a servitor or golem, and effectively tell it what to do by spreading as much positive news as we can get our hands on...
My grasp of financial matters barely enables me to make sense of It's A Wonderful Life, never mind understand the economics behind why nobody will be naming their newborn twins Fannie and Freddie for the foreseeable future. And it seems as though the more I listen to Radio 4 on the way to work, the less I comprehend, despite Evan Davis' brilliantly pugilistic approach to interviewing.
Here are the questions I most want answers to:
- What should us members of the public be doing right now?
- Isn't pumping a load of money into the economy when the banks aren't lending to each other a bit like injecting blood into someone whose heart has stopped?
- Why can't all the Bailout Billions be used to provide a safety-net so that banks can start lending to each other? A sort of insurance policy to incentivise the kind of maverick banking we need to jump-start the economy? Then, if the safety net isn't needed, the money can go back into our pockets!
Any answers in patronisingly simple terms appreciated...
Sorta related:
everything i know about the credit crunch
Like many others who blog on behalf of their employers, I have felt pressure lately to resist the urge to diarise amusing pet incidents and instead write something informative about the economic situation. In fact, I have been avoiding writing anything at all until I learned something informative about the economic situation. Others are not so conscientious. It is doubtful, for example, that the people who own the old converted factory in which HTS is located know much more than me about the credit crunch, but they have not let this prevent them from getting up and doing something - specifically, turning the building's heating off and laughing while we freeze. It is in this spirit of 'act first, have some ideas later' that I have decided to share with you the few things I do know about our economic situation (before my frigid fingers turn black and drop off).
1. The economic crisis is too complex for any human to understand. At the same time, the measures that could have prevented it aren't that much more complex than those advocated by any number of fairy tales involving prudent and imprudent pigs, mice, wolves etc.
2. The credit crunch is a great time for keeping money circulating by buying stuff! Shares especially. If you have some savings squirreled away, it is also a good time to buy a house or a commercial bank.
3. Even though the situation is grim, you should start doing now what you should have done years ago (avoid spending on credit where possible and funnel at least 10% of your income into a high-interest account) but didn't do because you were waiting for some kind of upturn in your fortunes that would mean you could funnel 10% of your income into a high-interest account without you having to cut down on takeaways and bottles of wine. Note that by 'you' I was referring to 'me'.
4. Nancy Pelosi was right, although her 'golden parachute' metaphor was perhaps confusing, given that a parachute made of any kind of metal both wouldn't stop you falling, and would squash you after you'd hit the ground. But her point was spot on - taxpayers' money should not be used as a golden parachute (?) to save the fatcats who reduced the global economy to chaos! It's much better to let the economy melt down, witness the total collapse of society, then eat the fatcats or make them our slaves. And slowly build western civilisation back up to its peak of greatness, which for me was in the 1980s. Go hair metal!
Incidentally, I am also against using taxpayers' money to save people from sinking ships. Why give a golden parachute (?) to those fatcat ship-builders when their grasp of hull metrics proves faulty?
Anyway, I know some other things, but I will have to stop here, because my fingers have gone blue and I intend to warm them by making a cup of tea and holding it for ten minutes while pretending to look at something important on my computer monitor and occasionally nodding and stabbing Caps Lock. Darn those well-heated fatcats who own our building!
Of course, I'LL be the one laughing when I retire early thanks to my squirrelled-away 10% hi-interest savings, which I am going to start squirrelling away this very afternoon. Or I might wait till next week, and spend this week's 10% on a bottle of Balvenie Doublewood, which is on special offer at Waitrose, probably thanks to the credit crunch. Golden parachute, silver lining.
