Vacation is over and it’s time to get back to work soon and prepare for an autumn full of both foreseen and unforeseen curve balls.
Part of my preparation is to plan ahead and see what I have to take into consideration and what I can rule out will have an impact on my companies and clients.
When it comes to inflation and price increases I am sure it will get even worse before we can see a decline next year, the reason behind it is that food producers have not yet been able to rase their prices due to their own cost increase because the type of agreements they already signed.
The energy market will be volatile at least a year more and for that reason we can not expect any stability until at least Germany, Italy and Holland has solved their needs and demands forth comming.
The job markets around the worlds is in high demand of recruiting people, however finding the right people to hire is becoming more and more difficult, at the same time critical competence both within government and in the private sector is becoming even more difficult to solve.
Sourcing, procurement, transport, production, you name it, stocks are not what they are suposed to be, in many cases even some products that used to be difficult to get are now back at best to pre pandemic levels around the world.
Businesses around the world are still making money but decline will follow once consumers are hit by inflation, some sectors are already feeling the impact other will hopefully endure longer and get out un scared once we also can see inflation retracting in different markets.
The war in Ukraine will be a war for years if nothing abrupt happens in Russia or Ukraine, the worry is not if Russia would loose, the worry is what will happened once Ukraine wins the war, and what winning can be defined by, is it Russia going back to 2014 borders or what would define a win and loose situation for each one of them?
I am sure once the energy factors are solved within EU with or without suplies from Saudi Arabia , then the back paddling from those countries that did not step forward now when we are in need , they will feel the long term impact of not being preferred supplier in the future.
The world will be more divided than ever and will cluster into at least 3 big clusters , once they are solidified into different economical blocks two of the will agree on the benefit of scarifying the third.
The greater good will not prevail, in the end everyone will sub optimize for them selfs once local difficulties will mount in each country around the world.
The disarray and instability in some countries will have an impact on us all, one way or the other, the big question is how to endure and get trough difficult times ahead.
If you look back, first came the pandemic, then the supply crisis , then war, now inflation and energy crisis, Interest are rising around the world, what next can we expect , that the real estate markets will be in decline?
The disruptions will continue and we all have to adapt and plan ahead for the worse and as usual hope for the best, usually the things we fear never happen, and the issues that really hits us are curve balls out of the blue.
Christopher
Bell Blomquist Consulting
Managing Director
