Our end of year review+fix of the Syntgama network is now almost complete.

We’ve stabilized to 27 active sites, down from 55 at peak, with 9 archived. That includes three new sites : Sideways Health (now purring along quite healthily), a new role for Moneyizor, involving the topic of the moment : macroeconomics (should be relaunching very soon), and the first site of a local West Country of England sub-network, Devon and Cornwall (coming in a week or so).

Underneath all this runs our Specialist Information Online strand, which is not public but deals directly with corporate clients.

Economic conditions are, as the saying goes, falling off a cliff now. When the money men start fleeing their markets you know there’s a war on. And boy have we got a war!

Syntagma’s notorious prudence over money matters is paying off now with cash reserves to see us through the crunchy times ahead and zero borrowings or obligations of any sort.

Marshall Sponder, our man in NYC, has been writing about all the businesses shutting up shop in New York over at Art NYC. It’s quite a bloodbath by the sound of it.

Here in the UK the blows are only just beginning to land, but they’re coming thick and fast now. People with fixed-term mortgages are trapped like rats in a sack. Nowhere to go. Three million families are already moving into negative equity. Dangerous times.

Still, the show must go on, and Syntagma’s sails are furled ready for the perfect storm. (Note to self : I must stop mixing these metaphors!).

There’s always a silver lining, though. When asset prices fall some great business opportunities arise for those with the cash to buy them. No wonder economics is called the dismal science.

As part of our ongoing upgrade and improvement of the network, we now have a new feature in the sidebar :

The 38 sites in the network are listed by topic instead of by name, and sorted into broad niche groups. The aim is to create a menu rather than a list, and to make it easier for visitors to find what they want.

It still needs a bit of tweaking, especially on the loading side. We will be rolling this out across all the other sites in time.

The three experimental portals are now positioned below the contents menu, and will be subject to further changes and extensions over the summer.

Feedback would be welcomed — as always.