The world is in a complete shambles. Perhaps it always was! The Israeli government has gone mad again, carnage reaching 100 dead already. Meanwhile in Iraq the whole thing is exploding (perhaps better late than ever), the powers that be still imagine that they are the powers that are though they are steadily losing it. (Perhaps also just as well). Basically, hypocrisy which as Shakespeare (I think) so famously put it is vice’s homage to virtue has fallen by the wayside (again perhaps not such a bad thing after all) – so even the semblance of homage is gone. The current German Fuhrer (Wolfgang Schauble) has also lost all sense of hypocrisy as he decrees pain and starvation for an ever growing part of Europe. Why? To get his money back? Hardly. After all as a Finance Minister he ought to be aware that when you devastate an economy it will never be able to pay anything back.
In reading about WWI (Christopher Clark’s excellent book “The Sleepwalkers“) I was surprised (a bit) that all the powers were becoming more and more apprehensive of Tsarist Russia, going on about their economic miracle (as we would have called it today), the fighting prowess of their army, in short a picture of an indomitable power, growing in strength to be feared. Hmm… Did nobody see what was underneath at all? I suppose not. Like nobody foresaw the current financial meltdown. And while the IMF and OECD are busy making projections for 2060 and so on, again nobody sees what’s coming either.
If you follow mainstream news at least in Europe, the Middle East appears to be of little concern, but HEY!!! The markets wobbled because of a Portuguese bank!!!!
Greece MUST continue overtaxing till 2025 (at least) so we can get paid back from the so called primary surpluses supposedly achieved. But how an economy being milked to extinction can continue to levy taxes when income is dwindling so fast is beyond the scope of their remit.
Oh, and the World Cup football final, between Argentina and Germany. Just about ALL the Europeans are rooting for an Argentine victory whereas the Latin American countries are all rooting for a German victory (they all hate each other as much as we do here in the dark continent).
Okay guys and gals, so what’s the narrative? Well, since a narrative is very frequently a Fairy Story, then anything goes!!! And all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds!!!