I’m going to enjoy the sunshine and go shopping for fresh veggies, work a little and go to an uplifting movie but first, some Saturday morning thoughts . . .
Canadians luxuriate in the glow of our July 1st Canada Day birthday/love-in yesterday. Monday will be time for our American friends to do the same – eat, play, celebrate and flag wave – but when the party is over, what then? Will there be sunshine or stormy weather?
I’m not predicting doom or wishing it (but wonder if there is a way to take advantage of it) – but noticing too many dark clouds to believe we shouldn’t expect a severe storm. Our world economy sits, again/still, at the precipice, at risk of cascading financial collapses vis-ŕ-vis a our collective wish, a return to old-style prosperity.
One has to wonder how anything but major upheaval can re-balance expectations or re-level global playing fields. My notions of basics, balance, hopefulness in life, business and politics are perhaps antiquated. Technology, information and media revolutions have changed so much. Is anything predictable based on past experience?
I find it heartening (though I cannot see a result other than one of political expediency coupled with continued financial stupidity) U.S. lawmakers are not taking a holiday next week. Rather, they will hunker down to try to stave off, once again, effects of having not enough money to pay their bills when they come due. They will likely increase, again, the amount they want to borrow without re-ordering how much they spend. Our Canadian government is outspending its resources too, just not on such a gargantuan scale, but just as dangerously. At risk to, for the Americans, it admission by citizens and politicians to the reality the world already knows – they are not the power they once were and their fiscal situation erodes their clout more every day. While politicians craft clever sound-byte knives in back rooms, one cannot help but remember that old adage about Nero fiddling while Rome burned, but I digress.
I heard a British historian/scholar Timothy Garton Ash interviewed the other night (click on his picture to hear 35 minute interview with Charlie Rose). He wondered if there is any possible way German citizens – economic engine of Europe – could stomach working harder than ever and moving their retirement age to 70, to bail-out Greece a second time in as many years so that Greeks can retire on government pensions at 58. His comments suggest the European Union - its currency, its economic policy and any strength it has will be weakened and may not survive due to the lack of political policy unifying them – begetting conflict and sewing the seeds of war-like actions. He should be forgiven for being a historian and, I believe, congratulated for being very right-headed.
Wrapped in today’s reality, not unlike our European friends, is the harsh reality of lowering expectations for everyone, particularly those who cannot change their personal equation. I remember the summer of 68, when Americans rioted in the streets over issues of importance but of far less magnitude than a global economy without easy solutions. Arab spring, European protests and riots may soon touch other shores.
One man’s observations are, to be sure, an incomplete picture of anything, insufficient to address the global morass in which we are all caught whether we wish to admit it or not; the metaphor of it all, for me, is the notion that we (the collective we) are likely to temper our willingness to help others if those we are helping are unwilling to make changes so that they don’t need help again.
Is there anything any of us can do short of crossing collective fingers and learning to do more with less, need less, want less?
Mark Kolke
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