The Games A' Foot

There is no shortage of "news" of all kinds and for the average world watcher it seems that the rate of earth spin is increasing rapidly.  In the USA, President Obama has reverted to every politicians last hope, doing personal tours to other places to boost the image.  But he is a lucky man, the Republican opposition seems to be doing all it can to help the Democrats.

But which Democrat?  Many have assumed that as it was Mrs. Clinton who ran the shop when Bill was on his travels and following his own interests she might as well have a shot at the President job herself.  Now there is talk of Obama going for a third term.

This sorry tale of Washington DC will not be enough to put them off because by the time it happens they will be home and dry and draining off the proceeds into all those personal accounts that people of this kind keep these days.  In any case there are other things to occupy the voters.

Gawping at the TV tells us that leading soccer teams from Europe are abroad, some in the USA and some in China.  For once I was actually sorry for the players.  At Zangchou (there are many spellings but this was the one at the side of the pitch) where Real Madrid played Inter Milan not only was the heat hitting 40 C but it was very humid and the air quality bad.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, PSG St. Germaine, a French side with few Frenchmen met Chelsea, an English side with few English, for another dogfight which had much snapping at heels and fouls galore.  The conditions were not as bad as the other but it was still a hot and bothered game.

Yet in a few days these teams will be launching on busy seasons with many demands.  The media and TV coverage will be as great as ever and about as informative as much of our political.  There will be big story after big story but all lacking in key information and all short of any certainty as to success and failure.

In football necessarily many more will fail than succeed.  This is the way the money goes.  In politics once the idea was that those engaged would enable many more winners than losers, if only to get the votes.  But the tangle they are in because of the incessant political versions of fouling and malpractice means we are in a world where there are far more losers than winners.

This is bad news for the stability of states and nations which will find their populations becoming more wayward and intractable.  When you add to that what is happening in the banking and financial systems these are about as reliable and sensible, if not less, than what goes on in football transfers and money flows.

As many of the newly wealthy players and those who pay for them and finance them are at present up to the hilt in the many property booms around the world there is a delicate balance between success and failure as on the pitch which is mirrored in our politics.

In China the markets have just taken a big tumble and whether the government can pump enough back into them to restore them is a real question.  In America the question is when are rates of interest going to approach reality again and become a necessary condition of the markets.

For both easy money and pump priming and all the rest has gone on for seven years now to keep all the games going, in politics as well as soccer.  China is said to have played a form of football centuries age, see picture above, and then lost the art much as they are losing the arts of finance.

Someone once had a theory about seven year cycles, that also was a long time ago so we have forgotten.

We may soon remember and the real games will begin.