The crisis in this northern territory has been developing for sometime but its full effects have been hidden for many years by the governing authority of the single leadership, albeit somewhat benign in nature, of the saintly Nicholas.His rule has, of course, been as the sole leader for longer than anyone can remember, however we are beginning to see some quite dramatic changes.

With the advent of new technological innovations, the country has been opened up to foreign and often quite controversial concepts to this otherwise often ignored and passed over nation.  As a result, the mixed tribes and races of the indigenous people of this northern forest land have now found themselves exposed to a whole world previously closed to them.

The introduction of the new telecommunication 7G Dwarfband has revolutionised communications amongst the vertically challenged folk of all complexions.  This has greatly enhanced communications for not just the dwarves but also the elves, fairies as well as pixies.  This has started with the introduction of the astonishingly small IPix phone and this has gone to new level with the innovation of the Elvedin and Fairybook social networks, and for the more depressive gnomes the antisocial network of Gripeon has attracted many users.  The direct effect of these new means of communication has been that we have seen the dawn of effectively a “lapland spring” that has rippled through to these northern climes and created a level of social and political unrest not seen since the extremely sensitive snow white apple tampering affair.

The demands have been for fairer and come to that, greater fairy representation, through to demands for appeals to the European Human Rights Court regarding several examples of vertically challenged prejudice. As a result, we have witnessed a significant amount of manufacturing disruption which is proving very concerning and costly in the run up to Christmas.  Add to this the worrying signs of weaker external demand and consequently employment levels have been dropping off.  The economic slowdown in many of the developed nations has already affected forward orders.  Short time working, or working for short people is fairly standard here but now we are seeing a growing number of redundancies.

A direct effect of this has led to dwarves, especially, going on an eating binge of comfort food, resulting in some serious dietary side effects.  Snapping belts and aggressive buttons bursting off strained yellow waistcoats have been but two examples. As a result, the authorites under the auspices of the international festive control body, SANTO, have ordered a nationwide no fry zone until the situation can be more properly addressed and the food consumption issues examined.   As a further aggravation to this, attempts have been made to adjust the generous full fat pension schemes which have been prevalent for many years with the workforce.  These are now seen to be unaffordable, however the alternative more sustainable and generally healthier final celery pension schemes have proven to be very unpopular both in terms of their length and their flavour.

This slow down could not have come at a worse time for this struggling economy, especially given its already parlous finances.

The financial situation came to the fore with the failure of the refinancing of the previously popular Santa Bonds which of course were originally designed to ease the increasing cost of the financing of the festive period.  The CPI (Christmas Price Index) has been rising significantly ahead of earnings and thus low cost financing packages proved to be very popular.  These facilities were subsequently packaged into CDOs (Crimble Debt Obligations) which were traded broadly until the underlying assets of toys and plum pudding were found to be of substandard specifications and frankly often mouldy.

Further action by the Santral Bank has been taken with a signifcmant injection of Quantitative Easing into the diet. Sadly, however, this has resulted in some excessive liquidity issues overflowing in the reindeer stable block, which in turn has created a local environmental hazard.

Thus with poor production levels from these industrial problems, alternative manufacturing facilities are being evaluated.  The latest proposal actually comes from the Chinese who are suggesting a radical overhaul over the whole festive industrial structure.  They are proposing that they would support the introduction of new EuroSantBonds to stabilise and refinance the country and these would be internationally backed by the International MidgetFund (IMF).  The Chinese would then undertake the transfer of production to their already efficient domestic factories but then more contraversially also seek to further rationalise the holidays by merging it with the Chinese Lunar New Year. This, of course, would have some huge potential for savings and cost reduction with the removal of areas of unnecessary waste and duplication.

The general marketing of Christmas would remain but the dates would be altered to realign it with the Chinese New Year, thus providing a single but far more profitable global event and holiday.  As part of this, the leader would retain his titular position and of course the red branding stays as before.  However, as a cost saving, the reindeer would be retired (although more likely recycled) and replaced by recently acquired Chinese Volvo power units.

The Chinese were delighted by the reception from the leader Nicholas, especially as he reinforced his expression of gratitude to them by repeating the name of the Chinese president in his closing remarks three times. “Hu Hu Hu” although it does appear that this may have been mistranslated from the original “ho ho ho”.

May we take this opportunity of wishing you a very happy Lunar Christmas New Year.

Justin.