Once you start looking for it, it seems that all around us there is evidence of financial decline. An airport for sale here. A dollar being devalued there. A house in foreclosure. A city abandoned. A factory closed. Government bailouts. Sensible people the world over have seen this as evidence that they should exercise caution with their money. Governments are banding together to do the same thing with their collective resources, attempting to even out the spikes and drops in the money market and achieve some semblance of stability.

Any market, when left to its own devices, will naturally develop peaks and troughs in value. You know yourself from buying commercial properties in Ontario that sometimes the market favors buyers and at other times favors sellers, and at times the swings can be extreme. When there are extreme swings there is a real possibility of ruination on one side or the other rather than just a dip in the value of their holdings. It is this ruination that the world wishes to avoid by seeking market stability.

To achieve market stability, groups of cooperating government entities, such as the G20, wield their financial prowess together in order to lop the tops off of sharp spikes in certain currency values and bolster others that are flagging. You may think that a government would object to its currency being devalued on purpose, since you know yourself you would never set up your ACH merchant account to lose value on purpose. But the fact is that if currency becomes too valuable too quickly, there is a risk of speculation. In places like Japan, which is still recovering from the earthquake, this can cause setbacks in reconstruction.

On the other end of the spectrum there is danger, too. If a government's currency is suddenly worth nothing, how can they possibly expect to pay off their debts? Since most national debt is held by other countries, they have a vested interest in making sure currencies don't devalue too much. Canadian ETFs, for example, may be needed to help out countries like the United States, Greece, and Italy out of the debt crises they find themselves in. In cases like this, the G20 may step in and downgrade credit ratings to keep them from digging themselves in deeper.

So what does market stability mean for you, an average real estate broker investing for your retirement? It means that the type of crisis that occurred in the United States, where so many people's pension funds went into the toilet overnight, is less likely to happen to you. You are also unlikely, however, to see any extreme market fluctuations that you can use to make money quickly if you're a savvy investor.