Wednesday 7 March 2012

Mad As March Hares





Everything seems to be becoming disconnected again and little or nothing is working out as it might or as it should.  Muddling through may be a way of dealing with things if you doing the shopping in a town centre where you know where you are. 

But is not an option if you are being sucked down a hole on the Grimpen Mire with only the Hound Of The Baskerville’s to save you.

Can anyone anywhere make sense of the American Presidential election campaign?  The UK Coalition policies, spending and fiscal plans, projects or the rest?  The EU?  The Euro?  The Greek debacle?  The Spanish problem?  What China will do next?  The international reactions to states in breakdown situations?  Add your own to the list, it is a long one.

Given all this we may assume that it is not just a general situation that is difficult but that the pre-conditions are in place for another crash or upheaval.  If so, then the question is what might be the trigger event? 

Or the “Black Swan”, the concept introduced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to describe unpredicted events with radical consequences.  According to reports Bank of America have taken a hit for a write off of £100 million on bad loans.  Could this small item push them over the edge?

The obvious one is Greece but there are other bits of the international economy and financial world that are vulnerable never mind all the political miscalculations that might and will be made by one set of national or international leaders or others. 

The advantage of democracy is that you have regular elections to help decide who might be a state’s leaders and government.  The disadvantage is that an election may happen when the last thing you need is uncertainty or inexperience in affairs or dealing with crises. 

Currently there are too many elections going on at the same time in nations that are supposed to be giving a lead.  How do you go forward when you are looking over your shoulder?  Do not look to the main stream media for much informed comment or analysis, they do not seem capable of giving it.

You have to hunt around the specialist sources where some expert information is to hand and weigh up what they are trying to say.  Because they are specialist they can only really deal with their own patch.  Putting it all together to come up with the full picture is impossible and both governments and the major media are no longer up to it.

Add to this because of “global” economics, the extent to which major multi-nationals have achieved dominance and peddle their own agenda’s and the pace of change and the way things move governments generally are well behind the game, dealing with yesterdays problems tomorrow, if ever.

Watching their performance this month is like watching the Mad March Hares trying to settle disputes of their own making and it is all madness.

And there is thick fog over the Grimpen Mire of world money flows.


2 comments:

  1. Demetrius, your post prompted one of my own. Attributed at the beginning.

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  2. "You have to hunt around the specialist sources where some expert information is to hand and weigh up what they are trying to say."

    I think one problem with our leaders is that they don't seem to do that. We do but they don't. They arrive on the scene with very little and don't do much in the way of adding to it.

    Probably there isn't the time, so they have to rely on advice from pretty much the same crowd who advised the other lot.

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