As I am recovering from a nasty tummy-bug that has been running amok in my innards, the rest of the world is slowly sliding into a global recession. This is what I think, in any case..
This recession, however, is not at all certain to hit on a global scale, but since a few days I know that one can loosely say anything about the economy, because the chances of stumbling upon some truth are considerable. Economics, as I know now, is not only not a science (I already knew that) but “those economists” are also almost always wrong when it comes to explaining or predicting phenomena in our economy. The field is simply too chaotic to cover.
Granted, it’s easy for me to say something like that after reading in bed for a few days. I am in the middle of Philip Ball’s “Critical Mass”, a very exiting book that makes the connection between natural sciences and economics. There’s more to come on that later, because I am only half way, and I don’t want to spoil the fun.
For the moment, I will make do with the notion that I might be grossly off the mark too, with my observation on the coming crisis, the recession or even economists. Maybe the crisis will not come – for now – because the frantic rescue attempts that are currently undertaken by a host of governments may work out after all. Lucky us. In any case, the miscarriage of the capitalist system is evident, as it was with the centrally-guided Soviet style economy 20 years ago.
I’ll be fully operational again in a few days. That’s more than can be said of the world economy. The coming times will be exiting and perilous, and maybe we’ll see the world economy come to a grinding halt. The stubborn refusal of the Americans to save the world seems to help. They are still playing the election game, even now that their beds are on fire. What do they care if they leave their rubbish lying around?
Obviously, the entire disaster is the USA’s fault. They have inflated the housing bubble, they have loused up the American and European credit infrastructure, and they have been living on borrowed money for far too long. And, to top all of this off, they have been unable to put a proper head on their state for the last eight years. The latter might finally change though, if – may the force be with us on this – Obama gets elected as president.
As I am writing this, there is still no green light for the rescue of the American people from financial oblivion by their law-making bodies. The guardians of the Laissez-Faire economy, the Republicans, are now the ones who want to keep the taxpayers out of the wind by obstructing a plan that will cost around 700 billion dollars. Why hesitate, all of a sudden? I wasn’t aware of any qualms the Republicans had to siphon off huge amounts of money to stick in their own greedy pockets. Neither did they hold back on going to war with other nations on the basis of blatant lies. This did not only cost large amounts of taxpayers dollars, but also a considerable amount of taxpayers lives. And now, all of a sudden, they are “more Catholic than the Pope” (as we say here…)
I consider the USA as enigmatic as the economy itself. Maybe Philip Ball can lend us a hand here?
