A few days after the second big German air raid on Coventry in 1942
when large parts of the city centre were obliterated and the smoke
had cleared, I went down town with my mother to buy whale meat.
(Because so few people bought whale meat, it was off-ration, but it
made a wonderful Lancashire hot pot -- tasting just like beef, which
was then almost unobtainable.) Most of Corporation Street had been
bombed out, including the Rex Cinema. However, its front facade was
still standing and, hanging by one end from it, and touching the
pavement at the other, was a long placard. It read Gone With the Wind.
As I was only seven and, like all the boys I knew (or at least, those
in our street who hadn't been bombed), I thought that the war was a
wonderfully exciting occasion. So I laughed when I saw this displaced
placard, which had certainly gone with the wind. I was quickly
reprimanded. And quite rightly, too. Strangely enough, however, I've
never read Gone With the Wind since then, although I've read more
than enough 'Great American Novels'.
I feel I ought to read it now. I came across mention of it on the
Internet this morning. One character in the book, Rhett Butler,
apparently says that the biggest fortunes can only be made during the
building up of an empire or the breaking down of an empire. Well . .
. that's certainly true today as America continues to sink under its
massive government debt. And, of course, since the 2008/9 crisis,
quite a few bankers, particularly investment bankers, have made a
fortune out of it. And the same applies in Western Europe.
If we proceed further into a double-dip -- on the edge of which, like
the aforesaid placard, we are now dangling -- then more fortunes will
be made, no doubt. It's likely, however, that it will not be the
bankers who will make fortunes this time but much cleverer people who
are now buying agricultural land or buying gold against the day when
food will be a great deal more expensive than now and gold will
perforce become the background world currency.
Governments will not be able to bail-out the foolish bankers in the
same lavish fashion as before. If they fear for their very survival,
governments will need all the money they can print simply to keep
large proportions of their electorates on survival welfare for a few
years. Meanwhile, politicians will be promising -- perhaps sincerely
this time -- that they will sort out their currencies once and for
all, and forthwith stop the continuing inflation of currencies which
has plagued the world for most of the past century.
Yes, I must read the book, if only to discover the insightful comment
for myself.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/08/
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