IT HAS been a remarkable year. Within the financial and business world, 2008 will be remembered as a troubled one which brought the world to the brink of economic disaster.

As things stand, we have yet to fall over the precipice, but the ground feels decidedly shaky. Anything could happen yet. Clearly we are in recession, but just how deep and for how long remains an open question.

The property price falls, business bankruptcies, the silent run on banks and their part-nationalisation, the drying-up of mortgage and consumer finance credit and associated plummeting demand for cars, not to mention the odd $50bn scandal, have made it a busy year for financial journalists.

The chances are things will get worse yet, irrespective of whether outgoing US President George Bush rescues his car industry from implosion. All economists are forecasting that 2009 will be very difficult.

As Chancellor, Gordon Brown spent the preceding decade telling us there would be no more boom and bust. He said Labour had learned the lessons of the past. How wrong can you be?

Mr Brown was referring to booms and busts caused by government spending. Today's bust though has its own cause, namely private debt. The plentiful supply of money in recent years has meant that borrowers were able to obtain very low interest rates on loans used to buy cars, sofas, etc. Now those loans are no longer available, demand has slumped and jobs are being lost.

The key to a prosperous future has to be founded on the realisation that debt-fuelled consumer spending binges are every bit as dangerous and destabilising as irresponsible government spending. Indeed, as well as being economically dangerous, there are considerable personal moral hazards created by the feeling that money grows on trees. The temptation to stretch the limits will have proven too great for many people who now find themselves in trouble.

One of the big projects for 2009 has to be to come up with new methods of regulating the debt industry, whether that be retail debt or that in the international money markets.

THE news from the car industry gets more and more ominous with every day that passes.

Vauxhall, Toyota and Getrag Ford are all taking measures to cut back on production over the Christmas and early New Year.

But the latest news from Jaguar Land Rover is even more worrying. JLR is planning to use one shift to produce cars instead of its usual two. The company has given no end date for the new arrangements.

Until now, staff at JLR's Halewood plant have got away lightly.

Yesterday's news could point to the fact their luck may be about to run out. On the other hand, the measures being taken by some of the car firms contain the seeds of wisdom as manufacturers look to the long-term.

By offering staff sabbaticals, Vauxhall is foreseeing it will need those staff to return to work in the future. This is good practice, as the skillsets their workers possess are invaluable and should be preserved if at all possible. It also suggests that Vauxhall still sees a future for large-scale car production at Ellesmere Port.

The same is true for Halewood, where Tata Motors has decided not to lay off workers on the second shift. If Tata had not got big plans for its Merseyside car plant, it would simply have saved money by laying off its staff instead of asking them to continue coming into work.

Long may such long-termism last.