Are people getting grumpier out there?

[Erik]

I finally spoke to someone who was suffering from GGF today. It was a guy at my office who is usually happy as Larry, but today I found him slouched over his desk, shaking his head and saying "this global financial crisis, its just terrible, I mean it's dreadful". So I waded in with a well-meaning rant about how an economic system based on exponential growth just had to implode eventually and, chin up eh, it's not the beginning of the end of the world as we know it, but the end of the beginning of a new world, and aren't we lucky to be living in such exciting times?, and er it's all about energy innit?... At which point he just looked up, dismissed my stream of waffle with a wave of his hand, and explained that his misery was based on something far more straighforward: he'd lost a huge chunk of his retirement nest-egg almost overnight when AIG crashed, and a whole load more which was in shares in banks.

I guess all of a sudden retirement looks like it's going to be hard work for many people.