Sometimes when I write an article here, I struggle for a title, but not this time.

 

I look around the world and all the people who are scared and vulnerable and feel so sad. I even look at my own children and their friends (who have had to abandon their University studies and all of the exciting plans they had for the coming year).  Am I the only one finding it hard to sleep at the moment ? I’m a very solid sleeper, and never suffered from any form of insomnia, but all that has changed. I wake up in the middle of the night, completely unable to get back to sleep.

 

Back in 2008, the GFC and near-collapse of the world banking system (and conversations with a friend and colleague) woke me up to what was going on, and I’ve been on a quest to make sense of it ever since (telling anyone who would listen to my ‘crazy’ ideas). I’m a weather forecaster. I deal in science, mathematics, logic, probabilities and hazard/disaster scenario planning (with the Civil Contingency Community).  Putting all of this together, tracking the charts and educating myself has only led to an ever increasing conviction, that what I wrote in an article back in 2009 is correct. I printed out the article and stuck it in a drawer. I’ve just had another look at it. I wrote about Strauss and Howes ‘Fourth Turning’ and then went on to sayWhilst we’re being told about the green shoots of recovery and economies emerging from recession, what we are really seeing is a very feeble pause in the downward spiral towards a major global economic crisis, only possible because of the trillions of £/$?Euros pumped in to shore up the crippled financial institutions’

That was over 10 years ago, and I had no idea the Fed et al could keep it pumped for that long. I’ve often seen people ask what sort of world we’d be living in if gold went up 8-fold like it did between 2000 and 2011. I’m afraid we’re likely to find out. I will continue to chart and post here, but if PM’s (and eventually commodities) rise causes pain and misery it will be with a very heavy heart. I don’t think any of us really wanted it this way.

 

Europe is literally crumbling in front of my eyes. I’ve visited so many of these wonderful countries and spent happy times with their people. I was at Lake Garda in Italy just last year. Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Turkey, the Canary Islands, Cyprus, Malta, Poland, Croatia – I have such fond memories of them all, and to see them quite literally shut down, with no functioning economy for months breaks my heart.

To those in the US who may still be thinking it won’t happen to you, I’ve been warning you – it will. All of our economies and stock markets and banks are at systemic risk now. I haven’t heard one single, rational explanation how the multi, multi trillion Dollar bill for all of this can be paid. I’m fairly confident that some very effective therapies to help combat this will eventually be found, but so far, nothing is preventing one of the worlds best healthcare systems in Italy from being way, way past its maximum capacity. If you’re not too concerned, you really, really should be.

 

Back in 2008 all the wrong decisions were made, and since then nothing has been fixed. More excess and wealth-harvesting by the elites, whilst the 95% are burdened with debt to maintain normal life (a perfect example is the £50,000 debt most students have after completing University). Inter bank lending has been just a few percent, whilst we have to pay many times that to finance a car, or any other large item – even mortgages don’t see the rate cuts being passed on.

 

And one last point. This idea that the biggest bubble has just met the pin to burst it. I agree that’s true, but it’s more complex than that. The big bubble is made up of lots of smaller bubbles. One pin often lets the air out of a limited number of the bubbles within the big bubble. This time it’s different. The virus is multiple pins (one in every country) and that one pin in each country is simultaneously bursting EVERY bubble. Think about the implications of that for a moment.

 

So, yes, I have a very heavy heart. The people WE elected have let us all down. Maybe the virus couldn’t have been prevented but the size of the bubble could, and perhaps, just perhaps, we should spend more time looking after each other, this precious Earth and preparing for threats to all of humanity, rather than spending incredible amounts of money on fighting wars and blowing bubbles.