Benchley Updated

In honour of recent posts by Ryan (somewhat pessimistic) and by my sweetie (somewhat emotional), along with the new Bush economic proposal, here's a brief summary of my view on the Business and Financial Outlook for 2003. I would have done this a month ago, together with the other financial and business experts, but first I wanted to see if there was going to be a 2003 or not.

Just because a year has started off with a January 1 is no sign that it is going to continue on indefinitely through the rest of the days, after all.

But, it looks now, we are in for a year which will be known as 2003. Just what else it will be known as remains to be seen, but I have got a good name all worked up for it if it turns out to be like 2002- or, worse, 2001, the worse year on record in terms of sustained lows on the PJ personal happiness and enjoyment index. However, I am not here to talk dirty. Nor, at the risk of being redundant, am I here to talk about myself. I am here to outline the economic forces and currents which have contributed to the present business and financial situation and to predict their course during the year which is now well under way. In doing this I will stick closely to the formula followed by the 4,543,265 experts who have already preceded me in this prognostication. I haven't read them all, but I have got a fairly close idea of what they are driving at.

As I understand it (which is just about that much- or perhaps, if I may say so, even that much), there are several causes which are responsible for the recession of 2001/2 and which I will note in order of their legibility on this crumpled sheet of paper on which I noted them while in a drunken stupor last night:

Irrational exuberance, artificial control over commodity prices, mistatements in financial declarations, fiduciary misconduct, irrational exuberance, overproduction, inflation, deflation, sub-normal thyroid secretion (or "Platt's Disease"), too much triple sec, deflation, irrational exuberance, excess of charts with black lines, excess of charts with red lines, oil supply, terrorism, and irrational exuberance. Let us consider these, one by one, and then drop dead.

First, irrational exuberance. In 1997 (which brings us to 1998), the United States obviously produced too much of this commodity, resulting in an oversupply to the extent of almost two hundred and fifty million exuberant investors. In the following year, 2000, this had been increased by no less than sixty-eight million- or one million for each of the sixty-eight states in America. This increase, together with a simultaneous decrease in deflation, or consumer resistance, brought about a situation in which the world's markets found themselves faced with what amounted to, in round numbers, quite a pretty pickle.

Thus we see that this shortsighted policy of increasing interest rates, and at the same time decreasing interest rates (or "Platt's Disease") brought about a crisis in production (or distribution), which naturally led to an increase in interest from short-sellers (This is also known as socially responsible investing: given the increase in global warming, shorts-sellers profits are rising with the temperatures. As a result, sellers of trousers, long pants, are often unable to resist the temptation of cutting of the bottom half of their trousers and passing them off as shorts. Thus, it may be more socially responsible to invest in ice-cream, which is delicious and keeps you cool anyway.)

The fall in the rate of oil production which accompanied this ridiculous state of affairs naturally cut the purchasing power of the emergining economies of East Asia, in particular China and ASEAN but not including the Phillippines and countries which regard McDonald's as a status symbol. With the purchasing power of these countries decreasing, the importation of cheap labour from these countries and the export of production to cheaper labour to these same countries, it is no surprise that people got so that they didn't know if they were coming or going. Often they were doing both.

Allow me, then, to suggest the following changes in our economic system which should radically alter conditions for the better:

1. There will be, if I have anything to say about it, a remedy for overproduction in the marked decrease of greeting cards, one-size-fits-all baseball hats, vodka and red bull cocktails, business books claiming insight based on ancient Chinese philosophy, tops to toothpaste tubes, art deco furniture, and those annoying flyers which they keep handing out at Sim Lim Square (quite annoying, I assure you. Getting on or off the escalator is like running a gauntlet).

2. In 2003 I look for a decided betterment in the relation of bond to stock yields. That is, of stock to bond yields. The ratio, as near as I can make it out without my glasses, is 4.70% as compared to 5.76% (these figures are as of June 2002, and what a hot month that was! Blistering hot. Darn global warming). Now this ratio, together with the increase in deflation and the decrease in inflation which must inevitably come about with the unpleasant distribution of labour that exists at the present moment (I mention no names, but it begins with "P" and is a country knwon for the export of domestic help), will tend to break down the artificial control over commodity prices and possibly restore public confidence to the point where people will dare go out into the street and perhaps walk one block under police escort.

3. Tax cuts are needed to stimulate the economy. Tax increases are needed to balance budgets which, due to falling revenues because of the recession, are falling into deficit.

4. Now about oil. Oil seems to have a lot to do with world conditions, although with so much being spent on skin treatment and the unclogging of clogged pores you would think people would want to have less oil hanging around them. It must be that the oil is different from the nasty stuff that oozes from your skin and traps dirt (icky, icky stuff. I wash my face regularly and it still keeps coming back). The oil we hear about in financial quotations never comes in bundles of less than a million barrels, which frankly, sounds a little nauseating. When you get up into figures like that with just plain oil, you run the risk of sounding silly.

In fact, I am not sure that the whole financial and business structure on which our system is founded is not silly, with its billions of barrels and its trillions of tax cuts and nothing to show for it.

I am working on a plan now whereby we scrap the whole thing and begin all over again, with a checking account for a hundred thousand dollars in my name in a good, reputable, offshore bank. With a head start like that i ought to be able to get my own affairs cleaned up, and with my own affairs cleaned up I am sure that world affairs would look a lot rosier.