Economic Winter

I’m looking out of my window at the trees lining the road, I hadn’t consciously noticed it, but the beautiful green display that used to sit atop the little mound of earth separating the house from the main road has slowly disappeared. Now all that is left is the bare trees looking almost dead. As it happens I like winter, it has beauty of its own, not as obvious as the summer, but it’s there none the less. The way the bare branches reach up into the slightly overcast sky with the sun struggling to peer through onto the almost frozen pavement on which people walk by all huddled into coats and scarves to keep themselves warm. I imagine that winter with all of its hidden beauty would be rather depressing if it weren’t certain that it will once again turn into summer. The cyclical nature of the seasons allows us to appreciate the good aspects of every season without worrying too much about the bad, as we know that soon the seasons will once again have turned.
     The economy is exactly the same; we have had a very nice summer recently, but now it’s time for the seasons to change. Gordon Brown has done his best to hold back the inevitable, even though his efforts will now make the coming economic winter worse than it might have otherwise been. We are undoubtedly heading into recession, some people will lose their jobs, there will be strikes and people will begin wondering what could have happened and looking for someone to blame. But the coming recession is no more someone’s fault than winter is, and it is no more permanent either. It is a necessary economic process as is the shedding of the leaves that happens outside my window every year.