I was just reading an article about how businesses are having it tough. Payment terms have apparently deteriorated and receipts or payments not made on time have caused considerably more businesses to go belly-up.
It’s a sort of catch-22 situation that regulators have to contend with. On the one hand the new Basel capital regime for banks should see banks become better backed and therefore, stronger. On the other hand, this latest Basel model is causing banks to hold back credit and is choking business cashflows.
Admittedly cashflows should be generated via revenue receipts but with interest rates up and property equity value down, reduced consumer spending is impacting revenue. Basel III (or is it IV now?) is holding back much needed credit which would have bridged such cashflow gaps.
Earlier I was reading something a mate sent through a day before. Titled “The New War” it had a horrible story about how Muslims are fighting each other in the middle east and Ahmadenijad wanted a nuclear bomb not just to decimate Israel but also its non-Shia Muslim neighbours. The context was a Sunni-Shia enmity which has run for hundreds of years.
Apparently the target was Saudi Arabia and the House of Saud royal family. If the Shia assault happens – with or without the Peugeot rider’s nuke – the obvious casualty to the consumerist west is oil prices. Already Tress and Kiddo gasped at the $1.45+ per litre price over the weekend. Mad there-will-be-no-carbon-tax Gillard’s action aside, it looks like it will continue to be very expensive to drive.
I wonder what it does though, to Israel and what this means to world history through the eyes of the Bible. Maybe nothing at all but with a huge event brewing in the middle-east, one has to think about implications to Israel and the Biblical views of things, no?
So – companies are failing, we have to drive less and an Armageddon styled confrontation is brewing. All this as we witness the unfolding of 2011 to usher in 2012. Is the 2012 story really credible after all or is it just a convenient collating of events to say – there, I told you so?
Somehow I feel vindicated for leaving a job which was taking away my opportunities to do other things. Since starting my new job about a month and a half ago, I have found more time to read, write and feel less stressed.
Last Saturday after dropping Tress off for a dental appointment I went back to do some reading and planning and after picking her up again about an hour later I went to the MST library to acquaint myself with the system and resources there and to do some research. Unfortunately it closes at 12pmon Saturdays so I only had just over 1.5 hours there. I did what I could and got home to do a bit more work.
I had to move on though, to finish my preparations for a foundation course I had to present on Sunday (“TRAIL”) so I quickly put my MST stuff away, had a quick lunch and started work on the TRAIL prep work. The slides had to be cleaned up and organised and I went through the 40+ slides at least 3 times more, and prepared guidance notes for a macro map as well as for specific slides.
In the midst of doing all this a mate called and asked if we’d like to drop in for dinner. Kiddo had an exam (a “SAC”) coming up on Tuesday so she has been working hard too so I decided we’d turn it down and concentrate on finishing the work we had to do.
We went out for a quick dinner and came back to watch a DVD on the course presentation again – a third viewing for me – before I decided it was enough work and saved the slides on a desktop shortcut and printed off my notes.
Somehow, spending time on these things made it feel like it was all worth the while. Given what I read recently about what’s been going on in this seemingly crumbling world, I’m glad I paid the financial cost of giving up my previous role to be able to do what I did over the weekend.
Regards,Ian
Sent from my iPigeon
Ante 