So whom do you believe?

Times are bad and there are no signs of improvement on the horizon.

People have been living as if they all had tons of available money from credit companies and never paid off the bills.

Everybody (private businesses, governments, the man and woman in the street) is in hock to the eyeballs, and the debts keep piling up.

Then one day the proverbial faeces hit the proverbial fan, and like it or not you cannot live like that any more.

Governments start talking about austerity, businesses close in record numbers, and private individuals find the threat of homelessness and misery to be arriving sooner rather than later.

So whom do you believe - the people who tell you that you have to tighten your belts and be sensible and live within your means, or the people who keep uttering "Crisis, what crisis?"?

Or neither of them?