Around a decade ago and for a while afterwards we pessimists were a lonely few brooding over figures and facts and coming to conclusions that everyone knew were hopelessly wrong or misjudged.
They thought we were just trying to attract attention to ourselves in the same way that squalling infants do when they have scratched a finger.
Then we had no means of communicating with others who shared our isolation and could only scribble things to the media who promptly binned them with all the forecasts of alien invasions or visitations of the saints in all their glory.
Now the web is full of them. You can hardly put “money” or something like it into a search engine and the screen will groan with links to armies of persons with one disaster or another in prospect about all the economic woes.
It is a relief to return to the hurricane, earthquake and volcano sites for light relief and a welcome dose of uncertainty. One happy moment this week was reading that the San Andreas fault has delivered bigger earthquakes more frequently than we have thought in the past and with luck Hollywood will be under water before the next disaster movie hits the screens.
You may not know that Herbert Morrison is the name of the radio reporter who was present when the airship “Hindenburg” crashed in flames and whose emotional reports are an essential part of any documentary on the subject.
It is one of those weird coincidences that a leading member of the post war Labour Government had the same name and who was responsible for several disasters of another kind.
He was grandfather to Peter Mandelson, economic and financial guru to Tony Blair. Tony is now to front a boutique investment bank in Mayfair to assist all his little friends with tax avoidance and playing the complex financial markets.
What role might Peter play in this scheme I wonder? More to the point, where is all the capital for this caper coming from?
Meanwhile, out there amongst the pessimists are some who have taken up the idea of “The Hindenburg Omens” (Wikipedia), a series of financial movements that presage a nasty crash in the markets. This is rarified and highly technical stuff. I enjoy looking at the charts but not attempting the mathematics.
These forecasters and experts who have turned pessimists are saying that it all going to be rough soon. Also, it may be rougher than the last two or three years. Given all the experts of one field or another who are claiming that we are now over peaks and on the way down in the supply of vital resources of all kinds they could be right.
In the UK we have major deficits in trade, energy supply, food supply and a lot of other things, so it all brings a smile to the most devoted pessimist. The thing that really makes us start to laugh is the idea of Tony Blair going into investment banking at exactly the wrong time.
And the hurricane season seems to be warming up at last.
They thought we were just trying to attract attention to ourselves in the same way that squalling infants do when they have scratched a finger.
Then we had no means of communicating with others who shared our isolation and could only scribble things to the media who promptly binned them with all the forecasts of alien invasions or visitations of the saints in all their glory.
Now the web is full of them. You can hardly put “money” or something like it into a search engine and the screen will groan with links to armies of persons with one disaster or another in prospect about all the economic woes.
It is a relief to return to the hurricane, earthquake and volcano sites for light relief and a welcome dose of uncertainty. One happy moment this week was reading that the San Andreas fault has delivered bigger earthquakes more frequently than we have thought in the past and with luck Hollywood will be under water before the next disaster movie hits the screens.
You may not know that Herbert Morrison is the name of the radio reporter who was present when the airship “Hindenburg” crashed in flames and whose emotional reports are an essential part of any documentary on the subject.
It is one of those weird coincidences that a leading member of the post war Labour Government had the same name and who was responsible for several disasters of another kind.
He was grandfather to Peter Mandelson, economic and financial guru to Tony Blair. Tony is now to front a boutique investment bank in Mayfair to assist all his little friends with tax avoidance and playing the complex financial markets.
What role might Peter play in this scheme I wonder? More to the point, where is all the capital for this caper coming from?
Meanwhile, out there amongst the pessimists are some who have taken up the idea of “The Hindenburg Omens” (Wikipedia), a series of financial movements that presage a nasty crash in the markets. This is rarified and highly technical stuff. I enjoy looking at the charts but not attempting the mathematics.
These forecasters and experts who have turned pessimists are saying that it all going to be rough soon. Also, it may be rougher than the last two or three years. Given all the experts of one field or another who are claiming that we are now over peaks and on the way down in the supply of vital resources of all kinds they could be right.
In the UK we have major deficits in trade, energy supply, food supply and a lot of other things, so it all brings a smile to the most devoted pessimist. The thing that really makes us start to laugh is the idea of Tony Blair going into investment banking at exactly the wrong time.
And the hurricane season seems to be warming up at last.
No comments:
Post a Comment