THE public continue to undergo a bombardment with the twists and turns of the European credit saga.
The daily gyrations of stockmarkets suggest the entire finance sector hangs on each tidbit of news or announcement from European and American governments and their central banks.
Prices of the world's financial assets and resource commodities lurch with each news byte and rumour.
How the sovereign credit crises faced by several unviable Mediterranean countries unravels will be the defining event of this year if not the next five years if you own a business, are exposed to currency movements and/or hold investments.
So that's just about all of us, especially given the fortunes of agriculture depend on the health of and order in the world economy.
These events may seem a long way off and irrelevant to our two-toned economy, but many made the mistake of thinking that a bubble in the US housing market that emerged in 2007 and took down a few merchant banks would have no impact on us either.
This is much bigger, as three economies - Greece, Portugal and Italy - are in almost daily meetings with Europe's receivers, which don't seem to be making much progress.
The fuse for Europe's time bomb was lit by the 2007 crisis.
The world economy lurched into recession from the freeze on lending as the world's bankers tried to work out to whom they were exposed and how much they might lose.
Governments borrowed more and more to hold their welfare systems intact and to pump cash out to stimulate their economies back to growth; new debts layered on top of existing debts.
Greece's wobbly economy has been unviable for many years with flawed welfare and taxation systems that are now completely exposed after a few years working with the Euro currency.
Italy's malaise is a far worse threat. This large economy has suffered with sluggish growth, rising unemployment and exploding borrowings, managed by a crackpot prime minister.
What we are being spun almost daily from the establishment of Europe and the US is that this can be fixed with more debt. The political and finance managers who took Europe into this mess are now scared for their own futures.
They claim the issues can be fixed by tinkering with some parts of their economies and turning bad short-term debts into better-looking long-term debt.
Can Europe compromise? Can Germans accept that they should change their pension age above 65 years while they watch Greeks debate taking theirs above 50 and whether taxi drivers pay income tax?
Greece must and will default on its debt burden. The only questions that then remain are how messy that event is and which countries and banks go down with her.
The worst thing you can do if you are a business owner, investor and commodity trader is to believe this debt mess can be papered over.
All the smart money in the capital markets is assuming that a bigger, uglier credit crisis is inevitable, followed by recession in Europe and the US.
If demand for resources from China slows as its developed world customers slow their orders, our mining boom will get the staggers.
The focus of your planning should be what to do in this situation, not whether it will happen.
