Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Good Riddance, 2008.

I really cannot stand formal ends of periods of time. But since my daily activities involve wrapping up performance data at end of period events, I find myself wrapping up events at anniversaries on this blog as well.

So, tomorrow is the last day of 2008. I usually wrap up the year with semi-indifference and look forward for a better year after January 1. But 2008 was not an ordinary year and I am not indifferent. Instead, I say 'good riddance' to 2008.

This was a year full of unpleasant events. This was the year when the political system in Armenia finally went down the toilet. In the process, the state murdered 10 people, 80+ people became political prisoners and quite a few others are in exile.

The next big process was the world sinking into an economic crisis. Trillions of dollars in wealth were lost in the US alone, thousands of people have lost and continue to lose their jobs and the picture is about to get even bleaker come February (after the Christmas season retail sales are wrapped up and a few retailers go out of business). Then there was the almost trillion dollar gift to the bankers in the country...

The only good thing to happen was the kicking out of the political dinosaurs out of Washington D.C.

So, what can we look forward to seeing in 2009? I'm afraid I am going to be pessimistic about the upcoming year. The wars will continue to happen and may even escalate. The global economic situation will continue to remain weak. The proverbial poppycock will hit the fan for Armenia with Turkey becoming more intimately involved in the Karabakh issue and the cash flows to Armenia slowing down. The repressions in the country will continue.

Do I see a bright spot? Unfortunately, I don't.

5 comments:

Ani said...

Wow, maybe I should just go back to bed...certainly good riddance to 2008, but, well, don't you have to smile just a bit that at least Bush and Cheney are going back to their hidey-holes (actually, Saddam's is still available and they like Iraq, so why not go live there??)

Certainly this is The Reckoning--it has answered that question I kept asking: Why does everybody seem to have more money than I do to spend? Well, turns out they didn't.

Good quote I saw yesterday in the New York Times, in an article on Gazprom (I guess Robik won't be working for them after all, huh?):

http://tinyurl.com/98xgvw

“Everybody was thinking Russia had succeeded, and they were wondering, how do you keep water in a sieve?” Ms. Latynina said. “When the input of water is greater than the output, the sieve is full. Everybody was thinking it was a miracle. The sieve is full! But when there is a drop in the water supply, the sieve is again empty very quickly.”

--------------------------
Sums up the problem nicely, and not just there. But I'm gonna say it anyway: Happy New Year! And a toast to Barack Obama and a prayer that he actually can be the Change We Can Believe In, because certainly we need it! As for Armenia, well, Payqar, Payqar...

Ankakh_Hayastan said...

That's the formula for pyramid schemes - as long as the incoming money is more than the outflow, everything is fine. When it stops then you have a problem.

Anonymous said...

And good riddance to the levon/telman-vano-grzo pyramid too.

Anonymous said...

it will get worst before it gets any better, the illuminaties/zionists and their cronies all need to "destroy" alot of things so that their coporate puppeteers have something to put in place to "clean" up a mess to make big profits

WW3 is coming in '012, so there will be many big opportunities for the evils to make big money again, that and to keep a stranglehold on the world

Anonymous said...

good riddance to the fascist regime of AR and its allies, 1 of the criminal duo has gone and 1 to go in 2009 along with his arturo-tashnago friends