Markets

It is Sunday, the day of rest. What are the "markets" doing today? Scratching their balls?
Tomorrow, we will wake to more talk of what the markets, the anthropomorphic representation of financial fluctuation, are doing.
Talking to a friend who questioned the validity of the term, I was led to reflect on what the function of this term is in our society.
We are currently having to decrease our financial wealth, having lived on money that has been borrowed or created for several years. The borrowing must be repaid, while the created money leads to no enrichment except for those who create it and syphon off existing money for the lending of the created funds.
So why must we create this bogeyman, the "markets", when the money is owed to particular entities and the amount we pay or receive depends on an equilibrium determined by other agents involved in the transaction? In an economic sense this is the market, however, the "markets" we hear about on the radio or television every day are not the same.
The "markets" are not represented as abstract entities that are determined by the buyers or sellers, but as a personalisation that is driving our collective destinies. Why do we have the need to abrogate our role in the financial transactions that we are participating in as individuals, companies, cooperatives, countries? We need to reclaim our role in the world we live in and answer for the decisions that we have made as individuals and groups.

The New Year

It is already the third of January and my year has started with a slow series of lie-ins and gentle TV. Some work has been done and the gremlin sits on my shoulder whispering in my ear "you should have done more". I pop him with my holiday feeling and the pleasure of no on calls over the past two weeks. As Pip might say the sentiment has more sense than to go on living.
What to expect of this new year? A job application is a certainty, a job a possibility and a pay rise seems to be fading into the distance with Lansley's pig-headed white paper reforms. The adamantine hubris of his plans is admirable for its purpose and direction, and despicable for it's lack of strategic thought and compromise.
What else awaits us in this year? Sunshine, rain, and more sunshine.