Get ready for the economic Ice Age
Across the continent and around the world, business people are telling each other, "the worst is over." Now that so much of the uncertainty is out of the way in the financial, automotive, energy and real estate sectors, business owners are daring to hope the great recession is nearly over.
So what if it is? When the glaciers of the last Ice Age retreated, they left behind a Canada drastically changed: deep gouges across the land, entire species wiped out, layers of topsoil scraped away forever.
Recessions do the same: They etch permanent changes into the landscape, to which we must all adapt or die.
The recession of 2009 may fade, but we will be working in its shadow for years. The one-two punch of the financial and manufacturing meltdowns will hang over the economy, creating, as the Bank of Canada is warning, a recovery "more muted than usual."
For most small businesses, the recovery will look a lot like the recession. Budgets will still be tight and employers still loath to create new jobs. The manufacturers who survive will face the same problems as before, exacerbated now by a higher dollar, which makes imports more affordable and frustrates their attempts to sell outside Canada. It's not hard to imagine the construction industry plateauing after the government-funded stimuli wear off. And we will all face rising energy prices and inevitable tax increases as governments look for ways to reduce the deficits that have ballooned out of control.
So if you've been sitting around waiting for economic recovery to bail out your business, forget it. You control your own recovery.
Where there's a problem, there's a business opportunity: The coming recovery will continue to pose personal, business and financial challenges, which spells job security for entrepreneurs.
Across the continent and around the world, business people are telling each other, "the worst is over." Now that so much of the uncertainty is out of the way in the financial, automotive, energy and real estate sectors, business owners are daring to hope the great recession is nearly over.
So what if it is? When the glaciers of the last Ice Age retreated, they left behind a Canada drastically changed: deep gouges across the land, entire species wiped out, layers of topsoil scraped away forever.
Recessions do the same: They etch permanent changes into the landscape, to which we must all adapt or die.
The recession of 2009 may fade, but we will be working in its shadow for years. The one-two punch of the financial and manufacturing meltdowns will hang over the economy, creating, as the Bank of Canada is warning, a recovery "more muted than usual."
For most small businesses, the recovery will look a lot like the recession. Budgets will still be tight and employers still loath to create new jobs. The manufacturers who survive will face the same problems as before, exacerbated now by a higher dollar, which makes imports more affordable and frustrates their attempts to sell outside Canada. It's not hard to imagine the construction industry plateauing after the government-funded stimuli wear off. And we will all face rising energy prices and inevitable tax increases as governments look for ways to reduce the deficits that have ballooned out of control.
So if you've been sitting around waiting for economic recovery to bail out your business, forget it. You control your own recovery.
Where there's a problem, there's a business opportunity: The coming recovery will continue to pose personal, business and financial challenges, which spells job security for entrepreneurs.
