Merchant bankers are usually downed by rogue traders or crooked competitors in the end – but this is (outside of our current epoch of insanity) a rare event. Bankers in general sit quietly watching what’s going on, and then secretly work out how to make hay when the sun isn’t shining at all. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Santander and HSBC are good examples of this. Barclays is sort of in the middle. And RBS and HBOS went under….but then, neither outfit was run by bankers: the Big Dicks there were on horses and toting six-guns.

On the whole, real bankers take positions – and hope nobody else notices. Sometimes they indulge in illegality to ensure secrecy, and sometimes they just plunge into another dark pool of liquidity. What they don’t do is change their minds every day.

Most of the markets at the moment are not caused by these ‘wolfpacks’ being demonised by the incompetent egos in Brussels: they are prime examples of mob rule. Here and there, Hedgies and bankers are winding the mob up, but most of the time the chief problem is that of putting people in charge of wealth strategy who know only tactics and news-screens. Breaking news, if I may say so, is breaking our fiscal economics at an alarming rate.

Hence the yo-yo stage: Greece got a loan, mark gold down. Greece can’t pay it anyway, increase Bond yields and mark gold up. China’s doing well, mark oil up. But China’s boom may run out of control, mark oil down. The Eurozone’s been given a huge war chest to fight off deficits, mark Euro up. But it hasn’t solved the underlying economic problems, mark Euro down, buy Gold.

Contrast this manic screen-watching with PIMCO’s approach. It has watched all this nonsense, and it knows what’s coming. So now it’s dumping the European market and going after emerging economy loan business. But for all the drones involved in this completely barking way of raising capital for business, the yo-yo goes up and down ever more frantically – until it comes off the string, and the audience gets hit on the head. Again.

When that happens, we’ll witness the penultimate stage before disaster: the Rabbit in Headlights scenario. After that, all bets are off – except one or two. To my mind these are definitely precious metals, and probably currencies…if one knows what one is doing. I do not see this as speculation: I see this as protecting myself now that the lunatics are inside the asylum’s gun-room hacking at the glass.

What I’m doing at the moment is avoiding all asset purchases, staying in Gold (if I had more liquidity I’d be buying even more of it) and starting a slow, steady investment in the Aussie dollar. As and when the Chinese Yuan floats (as it must) I shall be on the blower to Shanghai within minutes. These policies – and living entirely within my means – represent my profound and sophisticated financial strategy for the next 5-7 years. That, and ensuring my SIPP is following a similar line.

The world isn’t going to come to an end, but I’m certain this one will. I haven’t a clue precisely how or exactly when, but I think enough influential people and intelligent workers (not meant in the Marxist sense) have now caught on to the main insight. This is that capitalism as currently structured is unethical, founded on debt, aiming for goals the planet can’t stand, and financed in a way that doesn’t bear any scrutiny by a sane mind.

The other part of ‘this’ world that must change is the political one – but predicting that is a mug’s game. For me, I suspect the main issue is going to be whether Governments can afford any longer to do all the things they do – or whether we in turn want to carry on paying for them to make a complete Horlicks of it.

In that context, red flags like Ed Balls and rednecks like Nigel Farage are not going to have much relevance. UK Politics will not be on a left-right continuum: they will consist largely of dependence State versus responsible Individual. And I for one will welcome that as the best way to protect our liberties.