A False Sense of Security

Oct 29, 1929.

19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19-21 (New International Version)

When you finally finish whatever course it is you're doing, and the mortarboard and scroll have been tossed in celebration, a lot of new graduates will now find themselves in the working world. They begin to deal with a new, and somewhat gratifying side effect of working - earning money.

There are three ways of dealing with money - those who spend it as soon as they earn it, and those who invest it (in property, stock markets) and those who hoard it.

I am a hoarder.

I have always been a hoarder of things. You could have seen it in the way I played my computer games growing up. I would hold all the items in Diablo or collect all the gold coins in Sonic the Hedgehog and then find out at the end, that it was all worthless, because I didn't use it to good effect!

I think I take after my mother - often denying myself the unnecessary luxuries to save in the bank instead. The banks have always seemed a safe and sensible choice.

Yet, these are dark days for the global economy. The US markets is on its knees dragging along every other economy dependent on it, over 100,000 people in Iceland have lost their lifetime savings as banks have closed, and Pakistan is nearing bankruptcy (how do you bankrupt a nation?).

The Great Depression of 1929 will look like a stroll in the park in the face of what we are heading towards.

Nothing is safe or certain anymore. Not the banks and not the stocks anyway.

It is clearer now then ever what a fragile world we live in. And the rising fear of how one day, all that we have strived for, all the hours and toil put into work, would have been in vain.

And once more remind us that our certainties and hope should not lie in this world.