With the price of oil now hovering near $100 a barrel, the upward pressure on the price of everything is being felt more visibly.
The financial markets are as jittery as hell, housing prices falling in the UK and Ireland. Don't even mention the subprime debacle emanating from the states, set to swallow us all up.
Stalker was surprised to see the first ever headline talking about "1Tn Losses" in one sector - that's one trillion, not a tonne.
Headlines marking billions in losses for banks and financial institutions are cause for the red alert cries to go up.
But is everything as bad as forecasts predict? It's a funny old world where confidence is the key to financial forecasting, as opposed to the actualite.
Realistically things are not as bad as they seem in the world economy. Oil is likely to come down in price again - there's loads of the stuff left and they're still finding massive oil fields as evidenced by the maasive finds in Brazil and Mexico recently.
Demand is leading the price spike and with the credit crunch that is affecting the money institutions you can be sure demand will curb, due to the high prices and the lack of "cheap" money.
The 'R' word has not been used yet in official circles - likely because we're not there yet. Though maybe there's an official edict not to use it!
Here's hoping that the gloom and doom, assailing the minds of economists around the globe at the moment, will turn out only to be phantasms.
