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The way out of this is through collective confidence and positivity.
I'm not an economist, but the country must have been in a similar state at the end of the Second World War. The key difference between then and now is the sense of positivity created among the British people having united to triumph over evil and succeeded. There was a real sense of tribalism and a common, collective view that the only way was up.
It's often said that there's only so much bad news that you can report and my perspective is that the media are growing tired of the negativity of telling us all how dreadful everything is. For one thing, it doesn't help sell newspapers. Circulations are down -8% year-on-year as readers shun the printed word and discover that ignorance is bliss.
In the business world, it's sad to see the back of some of the retailers who have recently gone into administration but it reminds us that this really is about survival of the fittest. It's also about reinvention and evolution. Some of our greatest ideas have come about during austere times, driven by necessity under pressure. Canned food to sustain Napoleon's army on the long march to Russia; during WWII, Percy Spencer cooked up the idea of the microwave oven; aerosols, jet engines, rockets and radar are some of the many others that spring to mind.
Imbuing Britain with some of that ingenuity and positivity is what we need to get the economy back on its feet. It's great to see some green shoots being written up in the press, proving the point that every cloud, however big, black and cold it is, has a silver lining. We are simply in a state of collective shock and adjusting to the new world - as well as identifying opportunities that it presents - is something we've all been slow to comprehend. It's good to know that invention is still necessity's daughter as witnessed by some of the budding businesses that are thriving in the downturn.
Secondhand bookshops are growing in popularity as readers think twice before committing cash to new copies. The category has had the stamp of approval from Amazon who recently acquired AbeBooks.
Fractional ownership is also on the up. Why own the whole of a second home when it might be smarter to own it just for the time you want to use it? The same applies to aviation. Corporates are realizing that pay-as-you-fly is far more economical than having private jets sitting around unused. As a result, companies like Netjets and Jet Republic are thriving.
In a depreciating climate, renting is also increasingly seen as a far smarter option than buying for the consumer that greater flexibility. And not just in the property market. Brands like Fashionhire.co.uk will let you hire a handbag instead of buying it which is proving very popular with the fashionista brigade.
It's great to see businesses like Aldi, Poundland and Lidl growing their customer bases as people think twice before spending. Even more extreme is the increasing popularity of businesses like Approved Food which sells food which has passed its sell-by date to consumers online.
The truth is that we're all adjusting to life in the current climate and it's time for our faux-shock and self-pitying to end. We should put up or shut up and, in putting up, start to rediscover some of the ingenuity and optimism that has seen so many of our previous generations through similar hardships. In the words of Warren Buffett, we need to be greedy when others are fearful and, in doing so recognize that this is a time of opportunity. It's just not the type of opportunity that we've been used to in the previous decade.
