Wednesday 1 October 2008

House of cards

Picking at the flop that was the ‘flapjack experiment’ which I attempted last night, we joked about the forwarded email being circling this morning, of a modified one dollar bill picturing George Washington clasping his forehead with his hands in despair; simultaneously, our morning flick through Bloomberg started with red, block-capitals howling : “ MARKET CRISIS”, leading on to the president of the European Central Back, Trichet's solemn warning that the $700 billion plan must be pushed through “for the sake of the U.S. and for the sack of global finance”.

The global empire of the houses of cards is collapsing into thin air, starting from the very top peaks, leaving an empty space in the heights, which until lately, were occupied by the balancing compound of propped game cards.


It can be quite easy for the fat cats up there to become so caught up in their game, to then find owning up to inevitable defeat rather difficult. Like a game of monopoly really, the game will end, and the biggest winner n the game will be the biggest looser at the end of it, once all the cash is racked up and thrown in with the insignificant ‘economic bricks’ of monopoly’s realm.

The laws of gravity
After all, what is thrown up must come down and certainly the vertiginous heights to which market values have been racing on knitted expectations and virtual future expectations perhaps inevitably were destined to flop as no mega webs can withstand the pressure without solid bases.

A lesson? Perhaps.

We should be grateful
We could be lucky that a relatively small bunch of the main globe movers are crumbling quite 'steadily', one after the other, giving us that moment of lapse to slow down, take a step back and reshuffle our action plan of priorities -though as history teaches us, in the past governments have never quite grasped the earnest reality of critical warnings, each time choosing to postpone and ignore the crude realities until the gambling experiments would blow up, not their, but everyone’s face.

Looking back at many market crises in the past, one can easily dig out some documentary programme exposing today how some prominent decision maker or advisor 'knew all along' of the ratio of choices and realities begin gambled with, but, somehow -for pride or 'moral coherence'- leaders and shakers have chosen the honourable ‘suicide finale’, stubbornly choosing to sink [dragging all along with them], other than reversing on decisions and directions previously chosen.

Keeping it real
Will the glamorously exiting, eventful, quasi-Hollywoodian US Presidential show down concede the limelight in view of the realities facing the super power and the rest of the world, which is hanging from the US government’s lips?