The Economic Climate (2): Farmers and the Weather

At one time, when 80% of the population owned farms or worked on farms, the economic climate had everything to do with weather. 

If a drought burned up the crops, or they drowned in the rain, farmers couldn't make money.  And when the farmers had no money, the local general store wasn't doing any business, and neither were the suppliers to the general store.  But when the weather was favourable, farms produced a record harvest that put cash in farmers' pockers.  The farmers spent the money at the general store, which put cash in the store owner's pockets.  The store owners would restock the shelves, which put cash in the suppliers' pockets.  And so on.

No wonder the weather - and not the stock market - was the favourite topic at lunch counters and on street corners.  Weather was so important to people's livelihood that a book of homespun predictions, The Farmer's Almanc, was a perennial bestseller.  You don't see any weather books on the best-seller lists today.  But books about Wall Street make those lists quite often.

Today, with less than 1% of the population involved in farming, the weather has lost much of its influence.  In the business world, people pay less attention to the weather report and more attention to the reports on

• interest rates,
• consumer spending, and
• so forth, that come out of Washington and New York. 

These are the man-made factors that affect the economic climate.

In the economic climate, there are three basic conditions:

• hot,
• cold, and
• warm.