Forever blowing bubbles

I wouldn’t often find Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand a source of great inspiration. The same could be said for Twitter, which is, in general, the last refuge of the untalented. Nevertheless, I did find myself nodding my head at his widely reported tweet of yesterday.

He said: ‘Carroll has huge potential no doubt, is 35m still not a hefty sum of money in this recession we r meant to be in!?’ If you need a translation, Liverpool football club shelled out £35m yesterday on a promising young striker, Andy Carroll; while Chelsea found £50m to purchase Fernando Torres from Liverpool.

I am sure I am not alone in working for a business that has kept a very careful check on its resources and outgoings over the last couple of years. I have been lucky to work for a growing business that has had prudent but substantial resourcing (and, to be fair, restructuring) pushed its way. This seems generally true of the economy as a whole. Businesses have either restructured and kept a very careful rein on their activities or prudently assessed particular growth areas to ply with resource.

Except in banking and football, where money still sloshes around with abandon at the top end (maybe a different story at your local League Two side; or in your local bank branch). This is quite a surreal situation when large amounts of people will lose their jobs in the coming months. And isn’t this where we started a few years back? Huge, inflated bubbles just waiting to go pop?

People can learn; markets never do.

Lyndon White
Editor, Processingtalk

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