Thursday 29 September 2011

negative reinforcement or forever blowing bubbles

The reigning coalition in Germany has been compelled to make some difficult decisions and try to apply some sophistical cheer to an approach to the debt crisis that's been shown to be a costly failure. The public needs convincing that their tax monies are not being squandered and that this rescue package is not just a furtherance (kicking the can) of the same game, same irresponsibility and same greed that's bigger than the public's interests or hopes or aspirations. Such dishonesty and futility is being broached, I'd venture, mostly because of the berating and scolding that the European Union as a whole received from a very paternal and ironic United States: blamed for the global financial crisis and blamed for perpetuating fear and manufacturing and hiring timidity through its inaction. A lot of unsolicited advice has been traded since the public became aware of this Great Game but never in the form of an official rebuke and lecture. I hope the EU does not fold to this sort of pressure, since its only in the interest of the States and the Elite Them to stoke a virtual euro bubble. It's all hearsay.
Speaking of economic bubbles, Magic Eight Ball is indicating that the next boom and bust cycle may lie in the agricultural business--in food and drink. Cows and cars are already competing over fodder, leading to shortages and price inflation all around. I'm afraid that there will be a land-grab of the limited suitable fields and pastures, just like the exuberance that accelerated property prices during the Housing Crisis only to fall and to dash greed as well as livelihoods. There will probably also be action to turn more small farms into franchisees of agribusiness conglomerates, like the unstinting corporations that have put genetically modified crops, biofuels and corn-syrup into the food-chain. There are more of us to feed and only so much space left to grow what we need, without further decimating the environment. Hitching up home prices to a dangerous and unsustainable height was bad enough--it's scary to try to imagine how the situation might look with more immediate and needful provisions.