Hardship in Ease

In a short period of 4 months, the crude oil has declined drastically from the peak of US 147 a barrel in July to the low of US 73 a barrel. What a turn of event that caught everyone by surprise. When the price was at its historical high, we worried that it would go up even higher, everyone seemed to worry about inflation. Now, when the oil prices declined to below US 80 a barrel, we worry that a recession is unavoidable despite multi billion bail-out measures taken by American, British and also EU countries. Similarly, the KLCI was at the historical high of 1500 points just a couple of months ago, now, most of the investors start panicking and thus liquidating their equities sending KLCI to a two-year low close to 900 points.

The volatility of crude oil prices or share market for that matter is an complicating issue. But one thing is for sure, investors at large have pressed panic button due to fear of the collapse of the global financial system. Even the congressional bailout plan by US don't seem to be able to contain investors' fear. In the pressing time like this, what can common people do to ease the hardship?

In the younger days in school, we were taught to always save for a raining day. We were taught to think about the past hardship when at ease and think otherwise during a hardship. Unfortunately, we don't think about the hardship when we are at ease, instead we are driven by greed. History always repeats itself, but the fools keep on falling into the same trap as they never learn from the past mistakes.