I’ve always felt it important to observe the fruit of a person’s work rather than the hype that it receives. Better to deal with facts than fluff.
Whatever your opinion of the man, Mr Alan Greenspan has been one of the most influential people in recent history – and hardly a corner of the world remains untouched by the effects of his work. Was it at all good? Some consider the current state of affairs in the world economy to be a sad reflection of his impact.
Yet how does a man with such enormous influence really make his judgements? It appears that the real economic indicators, for him at least, fall to a lower order of sophistication than we realise – it may be the underwear market that marks out the state of consumer confidence. Mr Greenspan suggests, with some sensible reasoning, that particularly men’s underwear is a key indicator of the state of the recession.
So how is the market for men’s asset managers? Not so good in the US, according to Mintel research quoted by Michael Brush — it predicts a 2.3 per cent decline in men’s underwear sales in 2009 and no recovery until 2013. And according to Research & Markets’ 2009 report on UK underwear sales, growth will be negative for the first time in 21 years, although the sector does seem to have some potential.
Yet is it surprising that the smalls, the hidden things, are perhaps the most telling when it comes to addressing the major issues that we face? The major things in life are seldom isolated grand events, they are more a combination of smaller occurrences of this and that brought together in escalation. Each part can provide evidence of the state of the whole.
So perhaps the best place to start in attempting to measure and change large issues is on a smaller scale – where we can see the impact on a level we can relate to, just like Mr Greenspan’s underwear. That is one of the elements that gives me hope that Transition Town ideas can have real merit in creating sustainable and resilient communities for the future.
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