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For some, it seems, Santa Claus may not have visited this year. While the vast majority of us were sipping our Christmas port and musing on the blessings of life, that peculiar breed of individuals known colloquially as, “the economists”, were tearing their hair and draping themselves in sackcloth as their earnest entreaties and threats, aimed at the rest of us, failed to bear fruit.

It seems we just didn’t spend enough this holiday season.

Given the state of my depleted bank account, I find that hard to believe, though I suppose my spending has not necessarily been on par with the rest of America’s. The question to arise from all this is: should we worry?

My answer is a simple: no.

While no-one wants a return to the austere days of the Great Depression, I refuse to bother myself because Sam Walton’s bank account has shrunk to an even greater degree than my own. In fact, I have to admit to a sneaking sense of satisfaction at the very thought.

What occurs during an economic recession is that those who labor under the misnomer of being ‘middle class’ in America (“middle class” = those able to borrow money to spend; as opposed to those who can’t, who are known as “the poor”, a blight on society, and socially outcast) find the ratio of their income to expenditure drastically swinging in the wrong direction.

The Sam Walton’s of this world rely on the middle class of America to give them their borrowed money and keep them in the stinking luxury to which they are accustomed. The middle class do this by purchasing for dollars, borrowed from Sam Walton’s friends, goods Sam has paid for with handfuls of cheap rice. When Sam gets those middle class dollars he spends a few to buy more rice, and pay a pittance to his workers, then pockets the thick wad remaining. Meanwhile, his friends earn a nice steady income in interest on the dollars loaned to the middle class to buy Sam’s goods.

An economic recession occurs when Sam and his friends get too greedy and attempt to snatch more dollars from the middle class than they have available. Suddenly, Sam can’t sell his goods, so he can’t purchase more. He’s left with a huge mound of cheap rice on his hands and with an ever-dwindling bank account is forced to eat the rice himself.

In an instant, Sam’s worst nightmare is realized; he’s become one of the middle class he’s lived off so opulently for years. Unable to digest this horror, he leaps to his death from a high building, moments before the Federal Reserve Gods wave their magic wands, lower interest rates, and make the money machines work again.

Everyone is happy once more. Sam’s relatives pocket his money, give him a swanky send-off, which costs them nothing as they own the funeral parlor, and breathe a long-drawn sigh of relief.

Santa Claus has returned to Wall Street.

Filed under: Christmas cheer

Benazir Bhutto was undoubtedly caught in the middle of Pakistani politics. While the Islamic extremists wanted her dead – to them she was the face of modernity in Pakistan, a modernity that would spell the end of radical Islam – she also had political enemies inhabiting the other side of the tracks.

Most will blame the religious radicals, who will almost certainly claim the act and the glory, and likely they were responsible, but Musharraf could well stand to benefit from the loss of a rival more popular than he, among ordinary Pakistanis.

Whoever it was who planned and perpetrated this outrageous act, the fall-out will create shockwaves around the world, and further complicate the political chaos rampant in a country George Bush has long welcomed as one of America’s closest allies in his ‘war on terror’.

Filed under: Yet another martyr

There is nothing amusing about the killing of whales, although the BBC sending a reporter with the name Jonah Fisher to the Antarctic on the Greenpeace ship, “Esperanza”, has to raise a smile or two.

The Japanese are at it again. In contravention of a whaling moratorium, and with the apparent intention of killing fifty Humpback whales in addition to the one thousand it will slaughter of other species, to satisfy it’s “scientific research” and the palettes of rich Japanese who don’t give a damn about the consequences of what turns them on culinary-wise, the Japanese whaling fleet has once more set sail for the Antarctic and its annual slaughter of the most intelligent mammal on the planet.

Today, the Japanese government announced it had retracted its permission for the slaying of fifty Humpbacks. The world rejoiced. Japan had bowed to international pressure.

Call me an old cynic, but it’s my opinion the Japanese never intended to slaughter Humpbacks at all. The story was just put out to create a stir, allowing the Japanese to magnanimously withdraw and appear the good guys, while the slaughter of one thousand Minke and Fin whales continues with less international hoo-ha as a result.

There is no reason to kill whales other than to satiate the palettes of the Japanese. The moratorium of 1986 bans the killing of all whales, but allows licenses for “scientific culls”. It is this loophole that Japan utilizes for its yearly slaughter.

Thankfully, there are organizations like Greenpeace, and Sea Shepherd, a marine conservation group who have already made it to Antarctica on a ship named after the conservationist, Steve Irwin, to monitor and harry the Japanese fleet.

Japanese government officials accuse Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd of “….dangerous and irresponsible actions…..” but their own excuses for this unnecessary carnage are both illogical and dishonest.

Japan’s deputy whaling commissioner Joji Morishita, told the BBC:

“It is just like any fisheries – tuna, salmon, for example – the proper way to conduct the fisheries is to do the science to work out how best to manage the resources.”

Someone should point out to Mister Joji Morishita that the whale is not a fish, and consequently cannot be considered in similar context to other fisheries.

It would appear that when it comes down to basic intelligence, Mister Joji Morishita has more in common with salmon and tuna, than with the whales.

Filed under: A lie by any other name