These are very hard Times!
The economic crisis through which we are living is unlike anything I have ever known in all my seventy years. Even if you are 100 years old, I’m sure you could say the same. We have seen institutions that have weathered financial storms for over one hundred years that no longer exist. The world had simply got way ahead of itself through greed, and the use of credit to feed our greed.
In my father’s time we lived within our means. If we couldn’t pay for it with cash we went without. Then came all those easy-payment plans and before you know it, we were all in a great big hole. Now, we are trying to get out of that hole through the same method we used to get in.
All sectors have been affected, even the undertakers who have had to accommodate families in their hour of grief by offering lesser options. One of the hardest hit has been the auto industry. Dealerships have closed, and very special deals have been offered through a combination of the government and the retail sales. It has taken almost any kind of deal to move cars out of the showrooms. Formula One, however, has continued to race a full season, against commonsense logic that said it should have folded early on.
How can this be? Especially when you consider that the sport gobbles up so much cash for so little reward. It just doesn’t make sense. Honda Motors agrees, being the first constructor to throw in the towel. Meanwhile there has been all that bickering between the teams, with a split that was narrowly averted (for the time being) that would have created two racing systems.
Now, Toyota has finally wizened up to the fact that when the company is losing money as though through a fire hose they can no longer afford to throw more than 100 million dollars behind something as silly as racing. If your company won the constructor’s cup and your car was the winning one, if people don’t have the money to buy your everyday products, it simply doesn’t make any sense at all. Congratulations to Honda for being the first to blink. I believe that some sort of macho game has been going on. Although the water has been getting hotter and hotter, no-one wanted to admit that it was too hot.
I think that Renault will be the next to at least suspend racing for at least a year.
I will be very surprised if there is a racing season next year, or if there is, I imagine there will be a much smaller field. That would be fine, because in the midst of such intense economic suffering it is obscene to have Formula One cars going racing at top speeds as though we are in the midst of economic prosperity.
It’s time that we all get real!
Copyright © 2009 Eugene Carmichael
The economic crisis through which we are living is unlike anything I have ever known in all my seventy years. Even if you are 100 years old, I’m sure you could say the same. We have seen institutions that have weathered financial storms for over one hundred years that no longer exist. The world had simply got way ahead of itself through greed, and the use of credit to feed our greed.
In my father’s time we lived within our means. If we couldn’t pay for it with cash we went without. Then came all those easy-payment plans and before you know it, we were all in a great big hole. Now, we are trying to get out of that hole through the same method we used to get in.
All sectors have been affected, even the undertakers who have had to accommodate families in their hour of grief by offering lesser options. One of the hardest hit has been the auto industry. Dealerships have closed, and very special deals have been offered through a combination of the government and the retail sales. It has taken almost any kind of deal to move cars out of the showrooms. Formula One, however, has continued to race a full season, against commonsense logic that said it should have folded early on.
How can this be? Especially when you consider that the sport gobbles up so much cash for so little reward. It just doesn’t make sense. Honda Motors agrees, being the first constructor to throw in the towel. Meanwhile there has been all that bickering between the teams, with a split that was narrowly averted (for the time being) that would have created two racing systems.
Now, Toyota has finally wizened up to the fact that when the company is losing money as though through a fire hose they can no longer afford to throw more than 100 million dollars behind something as silly as racing. If your company won the constructor’s cup and your car was the winning one, if people don’t have the money to buy your everyday products, it simply doesn’t make any sense at all. Congratulations to Honda for being the first to blink. I believe that some sort of macho game has been going on. Although the water has been getting hotter and hotter, no-one wanted to admit that it was too hot.
I think that Renault will be the next to at least suspend racing for at least a year.
I will be very surprised if there is a racing season next year, or if there is, I imagine there will be a much smaller field. That would be fine, because in the midst of such intense economic suffering it is obscene to have Formula One cars going racing at top speeds as though we are in the midst of economic prosperity.
It’s time that we all get real!
Copyright © 2009 Eugene Carmichael
