Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

There's been a great fall. Not just Lucifer's; ours.

The politicians told us that Britain is a broken society. That was years before the economy started to fall off the graphs of share prices, the banks exploded like burst balloons and productive businesses shed jobs as fast as their sales orders disappeared. The remedy of our ruling and chattering classes is more of the state intervention which is a symptom of the problem rather than a cure.

Did Humpty fall, or was he pushed? Might he even have jumped? Will the TV detectives, mainly financial and political, find the right culprit? Will those in the public eye manage to evade blame? Will scapegoats be identified, to bear the brunt of public anger? Will the greedy and mendacious Masters of the Universe retire quietly with their ill-gotten gains? That last appears likely. It won't end neatly, with time for tea before the next scheduled programme appears, whilst you sit back and enjoy it. This reality show appears on your TV. but you may have to participate in it, and you may not enjoy it.

It's been amusing to notice how the media have minimised each stage of the economic decline, remaining firmly behind the actual level, and refusing to consider the possible further extent of the problem. Hardly surprising, considering their background, fawning relation to both powerful business interests and the politically correct and morally depraved leftist filth who control the public mind. They've now admitted we're in a depression; so it'll be worse.

Has the fall finished? Will things soon get better, so this episode of unpleasantness can be forgotten in the resumed hurly-burly of 'getting and spending'? Perhaps not.

There's much worse to come if you can believe the predictions of George Ure's Urban Survival site at http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm
His news for 12th February 2009 includes the following:

If you Think It's Been Bad So Far...

You ain't seen nothing yet...at least that's what a number of data points seem to be suggesting. This could be the beginning of the 'perfect storm' in economic terms. Some of the points I'm watching and pondering:

...

My attorney called yesterday to advise me that US banks were leveraged something like 83%, which is why we are having such a mess of things. Canadian banks, if I followed his logic, were only leveraged to about 78%, which is why people in Canada are not screaming bloody murder about sailing off the edge of the financial world. But in Europe - and this is a scary thing to think about, the leverage was on the order of the UK's 96%, which means that when Europe starts to collapse, it's going down big-time. We're already seeing the story's leading edge with headlines like "European banks' toxic debts risk overwhelming EU governments."
...
He's picking up the financial press on this, but it fits the pattern he's been predicting for a long time. Note that this is not from a mystic seer, nor someone predicting the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but from someone who has studied the patterns of financial and economic statistics for a long time, and considered social trends, to conclude that massive economic and social collapse is quite likely, in the near future. You may not place much credence in his associates 'ricketty time machine', using shifts in the emotional content of language used in discussion groups on the internet to predict likely future events, - but they predicted the top of the stock market in America, within a day.

Another straw in the wind blows from the direction of James Kunstler's site at http://www.kunstler.com/ He has long been predicting that the declining output of oil, combined with growing demand from the rising economic powers of Asia, would force an end to what he calls the Era of Happy Motoring, and it's associated urban sprawl.

These are people who seem able to see further than most, certainly better prognosticators than Gordon the Saviour of the World, or the Obamessiah, or any of their court jesters.

As for economists; to whom many politicians turn in times of uncertainty,to read the runes or tealeaves; they're mostly eager to issue the expected soothing statements and encourage their master's continuing follies. The most competent and honest sect of economists, and hence the least regarded, is the Austrian School. They emphasise that a problem caused by government's over expansion of the money supply and ensuing profligacy, is not to be cured by even more of the same on a more gigantic scale. The Ludwig von Mises Institute at http://mises.org/ is their main bastion.

All the king's horses, and all the king's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

All the pompous commentators and cunning advisors to unclad Emperors, will have no more success. As things fall further apart, the Ravens will be fed.