Active Exercise - Economic bright spots
Economic bright spots
Since there's such a lot of depression in the media about economic bad
times, I thought I would look on the positive side, and at some reasons why
small, well run countries don't need to be desperately worried about the
situation.
First of all I must say that there isn't much good news available.
Good news usually means that we reach some new level, some positive new peak.
In fact, there is no way to reach new peaks when major economies like the US,
France, Germany Japan and the UK are experiencing massive falls in their
stockmarkets, when many banks don't want to lend money, and multi-national
companies based in the US or London are making cutbacks as they expect much
lower profits or even losses.
One of the problems facing smaller countries is that a lot of their
international companies have debt which they need to pay back. Past profit
forecasts are not realistic in today's economy. That's why they have to cut
costs. Cutting costs may mean stopping their workers from travelling, cutting
their expenses or benefits (including language tuition!), forcing them to take
unpaid holiday, asking them to take pay cuts, asking people to volunteer for
early retirement, or even making people redundant. Some or all of such actions
are being taken by multinational companies with branches in the Czech
Republic.
Now for the good news. The reality is that the problems for many
multinationals largely originated in their base countries- for example the UK,…