It's cool by the Pool - Right?

The banks have 6 months to turn around the current financial infection that has infested commerce. If they fail, we - wherever we may be - face the prospect of war.

I remember as a teenager being convinced that our way of life was imminently about to collapse. I was aware, you see, of the amount of nuclear weapons in the Russian and American arsenal and it made sense that one should obliterate the other first. It was something like the skit we saw in the Dark Knight, with the ferry boats, and had the same, somewhatsurprising result.

But that was many years ago. I remember looking at tangible streets and homes in Bloemfontein and wondering - how could destruction find its way here? Then, I tended to feel better.

Now of course, it's true that the question I asked as a teenager was a fundamentally important one, how could destruction find its way here, because the answer to that question is how a crisis that really started as a crisis of conscience, or glut from a bevy of bankers from across the Atlantic, can find its way to your pavement, and into the door of your home.

The answer of course is global commerce. The money in your pocket - it's value is tied to complex systems of commerce, exchange rates, banking. The banks of course played games with our money, using things like derivatives, hedges, leverage and gearing. They based their premise of infinite wealth - for example - on the idea that property markets could appreciate indefinitely, and that a home owner could use his or her home as a giant ATM machine, drawing money against a mortgage, dreaming money into being.

It's a complicated system, but that system is now wrecked, meaning little or no credit is available, meaning a lot of activity needs to come to a standstill. Meaning contraction is on the menu everywhere, whether we like it or not. Not much can operate these days without what they euphemistically term 'finance'. Or 'Capital.' Those are fancy words for giving money to a business or venture before that business or venture has earned it. It's the business equivalent of giving away credit cards.

So that's stopping.

My concern is that next year, in 2010, the Ironman may loose it's sponsor. So me not doing it this year may mean I may NEVER do it again.
We'll be saying goodbye to a lot in 2009.