Feeling 90s

In keeping a track of the miserable state of my investments I've realised that UK plc is now giving up on 15 years of stock market gains. This is an impressive achievement. There was a time when I felt, a little smugly, that I'd invested wisely and put aside enough money each month to ensure a comfortable retirement.

In the later part of 2007 I read Nassim Taleb's "Black Swan" and began to fret about what I'd actual exposed myself to. His premise is that the perceived wisdom of investing monthly in stock markets that always rise is a fallacy. In the end it's all going to end in tears.

For those of you thinking about or coming up to retirement, it probably will be a painful recognition that there's no other choice but to keep on working. Unfortunately that means I need to consider other plans that will allow me to stop working for money earlier.

Before you get too downhearted, spare a thought for the people living in Iceland. They're really going backwards up the creek, fully kitted out with barbed wire canoe and a sieve to bale out the water. Latest predictions are their economy will contract by 10% next year. That's a truly worrying statistic; imagine the rest of the world's economy contracting by that much.

Here in the UK, our darling Chancellor finally admitted that we're going into a recession. You really don't get many prizes for stating the bleeding obvious.

While our Prime Minister made the greatest political gaffe seen in some time; in a unique moment of hubris he described how he had "saved the world". Terrible choice of words, it's going to haunt him between now and the next general election. We'll see it played over again so many times he's going to want to cry into his truly well funded state retirement.