According to recent reports in the oil industry press the last quarter has been the worst for many years, fridays market close saw oil prices at a one year low with investor confidence at a similar level.
Being perverse (even though I earn my crust selling a drop of oil) I see this as particularly good news insofar that it eases the crushing pressure that high oil prices impose on our customers to a degree, always bearing in mind that presently the oil price is merely lower, not low, as Brent Crude hovers around the $100 per barrel mark which was actually unthinkable a few short years ago.
There is currently little around to lift the oil price as the world economy continues to flatline, strangely if you ignore the doomsayers life at our basic level continues to function with some semblance of normality, the fact that a motely collection of assorted wide boys who trade commodities (of which oil is a component) with a vested interest in constantly hyping prices are currently experiencing hard times is, quite simply , tough.
The very fact that this time around its the wide boys that are most affected by the recession is both poingant and highly significant as it exposes the achilles heel of an out of control financial system that is almost entirely a victim of its own greed and folly.
The barren creed of milking everything for all it is worth, focussing heavily on short termism to screw a fast buck out of every knee jerk situation or market convulsion has quite simply run out of road, in the process this folly has sucked in a political establishment largely unprepared for the mounting tally of inescapable consequences.
Any current surge in oil prices would, at grass roots, merely stoke the furnace of inflation, damaging the most productive but vulnerable at the very end of the supply chain, it will be the grass roots of the economy, that productive worthwhile apendage that has for so long been despised by both the wide boys and politicians that will eventually lead the way out this current unholy mess.
The primary production agricultural and manufacturing sectors have always and will continue to produce things that are actually needed, are tangible and actually produce the real sustainable wealth so vital for a sound balanced economy.
I remain quietly confident that this recession really is unlike anything that has gone before, it is of an entirely different nature and its irresistable effects are interesting insofar that they result from what initiallly appeared to be a seemingly disconnected chain of events unwittingly unleashed by those currently suffering the most.
This obscure sequence of cause and effect came together assuming an unstoppable momentum constantly mutating and evolving as everything devised to correct the situation compounds the increasingly toxic mix that must inevitably run its course, the only certainty being that whatever the final outcome, things will never be the same again for those responsible.
It is infiltrating the corridors of political and financial power with devastating effect, enhanced by the failure of its delusional victims to forsee that it could, or rather more significantly, to even comprehend that it would and is indeed currently hammering them at this very moment, such is their apparent shock they give the impression of rabbits startled by headlights.
It is the upper echelons of our economy, the bankers, the bureaucrats and politicians that so richly deserve the currently occuring merciless shake out, it has been a long time coming but that time has only increased the ferocity of the irresistable market forces that signal a necessary but painful historic reconnection with financial and political reality.
They alone created the fertile conditions for what is now coming home to roost, it is they collectively who must bear responsibility for and endure the unpredictable consequences of the insatiable financial monster they created but cannot now control.
My quiet confidence in an eventual favourable out come is honed by a lifetime of relative adversity that is shared by so many others at our lowly level in the scheme of things that thankfully has given us the mindset that will ensure our kind will be around to benefit when the upturn inevitably eventually occurs.
