<watching the world economy collapse into a D-event Black Hole would be the Mother of All Horror Movies. People would pay good money to see it, so to speak.>
Imagine a world economy collapse due to cascading counter-party defaults in derivatives and then everything else, combined with an H5N1 pandemic [strictly H12N8 as H5N1 has to combine with some other virus and do a DNA swap to hit the big time and H7N7 is apparently a good candidate which I suppose makes H12N8 but maybe bug family names don't work like that - women these days often keen their maiden name and their offspring are all over the map]. Throw in Taupo or Yosemite caldera's doing a big one and a bolide splash in the mid-Pacific and we should really be having a LOT of fun.
Survivors would have freeways to themselves, a wide choice of housing and all sorts of good things. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good. Look at Katrina for example. Globalstar has sold heaps of handsets since then.
The 21st century seems likely to be the beginning of history. The olde-style post glaciation 10,000 years of genocidal alpha male tribal dominance hierarchies based largely on found wealth and subsistence agriculture ended with the industrial revolution, globalisation and the zygotic stage of genetic engineering and cyberspace.
There seems likely to be a lot of fun in store for us [or descendants]. Don't forget the next glaciation which could come in with all that [we probably haven't got enough CO2 in the air to stop it yet] just to really keep things hopping.
What's funny is that people still worry about plastic bags in supermarkets being a significant problem to worry about. Did you know they take hundreds of years to decompose in landfill? Tsk, tsk. There was an article about it in the New Zealand Herald the other day and they really presented it as a major problem. I've noticed coal has taken millions of years to decompose and shows not much sign of doing so still. But I don't get all worked up about it. Plastic bags can stay in landfill as long as they like for all I care.
Meanwhile, February is nearly finished so we are well into 2006 and still the dreaded deflation monster is nowhere to be seen. Not even a growl over the hills, through the forest in the night. This is like "Waiting for Godot". Or, maybe even the Second Coming and Rapture, which have been 2000 years so far and counting.
How long are we expected to wait? So far, it has been 7 years and we into the 8th. It was early 1999 I started thinking it was time for a crunch and possibly a deflationary implosion was worth worrying about. Not that I bet on that of course, just a thing to keep a weather eye on. A crunch was certain but a deflationary implosion seemed unlikely to me, but quite possible.
I thought Uncle Al KBE would do what he did. Everything would drop into a valley, then a year or two later, come right again. The valley was deeper and a few years longer than I expected and we are still not right up the other side, with interest rates still rising. Uncle Al KBE had the pleasure of pretty much seeing it through.
Now, Big Ben is in charge of the helicopter controls.
Mqurice |
