THE APOCALYPSE IS COMING! To a Bank / Food Reserve, Near You?

Ok. Yes. Deliberately gloomy, click bait friendly headline there. But I make NO apologies for that. Because in effect, THE GOVERNOR OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND just did the same thing. 

He used the term 'apocalyptic'. That is:

1:

DEEPLY irresponsible. His job is to ensure calm, clinical, creative management of an independent financial system in the UK. He just did the very opposite; stoking the very panic he is entrusted to curtail and prevent. 

2: 

AND HE IS WRONG! Because 'apocalypse' is NOT the same as 'Armageddon'. For whatever reason? Those terms have become conflated and confused in recent linguistic idiom. Apocalypse = revelation. Now, that COULD, in theory, spell some world ending chaotic catastrophe. But it need not do so. 

Revelations can be good, healthy, helpful. They can even enable GROWTH and PROGRESS, albeit, painfully so? So, in a way..

3:

Governor is also..RIGHT?! 

• As in, though he does not intend to be that, he is the bringer of necessary, tough but also, in a way, positive news? 
• His stark warning is a wake up call. A reversal of any complacency and a jab in the right direction. 
• What he is saying, if he's saying anything at all, is that the Ukraine situation is, by its nature, crippling a vital food delivery line. 
• That, in turn, drives up the costs in both supply and demand, slowing the entire worldwide chain of economic development. 

However..such events are part of a CYCLE. So, equally, wait for it: 

4: 

He is still: WRONG! 

That's MY apocalypse, here. A revelation.  

Yes, Russia's attack on / invasion of /attempted genocide in Ukraine is a matter of cold, brutal, evil fact. 

It transcends the complexities of geopolitics and whatever rationale Putin and co cooked up to justify their inexcusable actions. 

And yet: consider the timing. 

• Though few predicted the full on invasion (even the Head of French secret services doubted it would happen; he is now..um..not in that job anymore?!); it is interesting that the Russians moved in JUST as the worldwide economy was about to stumble. 
• And: Though Putin arguably held us all ransom, already, via heating and other resource prices, he knew that now was time to take radical, draconian and despotic action. Because the clock was ticking. 

As in: a similar recession, even depression, was on the cards, in any event? Though the Ukraine war has not helped any means, it would be complacent at best and even delusional, at worst, to cite that as sole catalyst for where we are headed. 

IE: 

5: 

Governor is BOTH right AND wrong. 

• Possibly ill advised to cite food shortages/prices as primary cause for concern via the Ukraine supply line as main explanation. They were in trouble, anyway, surely? Russia just added an accelerant. 
• RIGHT about the extreme fallout we do now face. 
• PROBABLY WRONG to even hint at all that being a kind of end of world scenario from which there is little to no evasion. 
• RIGHT about that being a kind of revelation (ie: apocalyptic!). 

Thing is? Whether one likes it or not, the global economy does indeed move in cycles of boom/bust/recession/rebuild. 

2007-8 saw the beginnings of a MASSIVE crash. 

Things were built back, after sacrificial cuts and bailouts. Normality began to resume, circa 2012 and we enjoyed a relative calm of say ten years? 

But throw in COVID, the monies lost to said / pay outs by governments, lost business /revenue etc? And THEN the massive, artificial spike / mini boom, when everything seemed to get back on track? PERFECT STORM. 

That pandemic / post lockdown circumstance, plus the inevitable 10-15 year cyclical system and: Checkmate. Or stalemate, at least?

We are headed, for inevitable economic slowdown. But NOT necessarily, some end of the world, global economic meltdown.

There is now an advance warning and nations can prepare, build trenches and go to war, so to speak, so that we do not, in actual fact, have to go to, um, actual..war? It happened before and could happen again. Then that really WOULD be apocalyptic. AND Armageddon. It isn't. And in a way, the Governor just gave us a helping hand wake up call, albeit arguably through extreme idiomatic error and needlessly panicked phrasing? 

THE END? ..Not necessarily. Tech can help. And it IS helping. Forecasting trends; managing change and ensuring we stay ahead of the game, in any economic climate. 

THIS company is especially promising on that front.