I'm not an ecomist but...

I can't help feeling there is something very screwy going on with the stock markets. They just seem to keep going up in spite of what is going on around us.

During my working day I see many companies and organisations; some are doing well, many are just getting by and far too many are either on the way to closing or now closed.

I see empty shops and business units (some empty for years)across the south of England. I see those shops that are open, having continuous rolling sales with huge discounts.

If I believe what I see, then the economy as a whole is not well. Belts are tight and getting tighter, pay is flat or even down for many and still, new job losses are announced.

So why in this maelstrom of bad news does the stock market keep going up?

Is it because it's the only place banks and trust funds will invest? Has the real value of the FTSE companies really gone up? Is too much money chasing too few stocks.

I see the real economy slipping backwards into what feels like a re-run of the 1970s and yet the stock markets appear to be driven by some other primal force utterly disconnected from the shops, industrial units and factories that I see.

Like an over stretched elastic band, I have a nasty feeling that something somewhere quite soon will go PING! When it happens I'm going to guess that it will be the ordinary everyday people who get hurt and that the bankers and stock brokers will be elsewhere counting their gold and silver.