I've been trying to understand the current economic woes, but I'm not succeeding very well. Every second or third day, we hear of central banks cutting interest rates. We hear of governments putting out stimulus packages. We hear of tax cuts, adjustments in monetary and fiscal policy.
We hear of infrastructure spending, the "shovel-ready" type being preferable. On and on, but none of it buoys up the markets. Presidents and treasury secretaries, prime ministers and finance ministers, central bank presidents are all twisting in the wind. A mutual fund manager appears on the Business News Network and is congratulated for only losing 20% of his portfolio whereas the overall market lost 30% or more. He "beat the market"! We need more of these financial icons; they do their best after all.

One day last week the U.S. secretary of the treasury was introduced with great fanfare to outline the administration's recovery program. As soon as it appeared, early in his speech, that he was speaking in general terms and had no specific proposals, the financial markets headed south and have been going down ever since. Confidence, we are told, is the key to recovery, but there seems to be no thread of it anywhere.

When, and if, we have a recovery, two or three or more years from now, (the time frame depending on which "expert" you choose to believe) we will be told that it was "obvious" what we should have done differently. How myopic we were! If only, if only.

Will the historians of the 2070's and 2080's look back on the "economic cataclysm" of the first 20 years of the century and declare that the Great Depression of the 1930's was a picnic by comparison? Will they speak of food riots, crime waves, rebellions, government repression with heads being busted, neo-Marxist and neo-Nazi ascendancy? One can let one's imagination run wild.