It may be holiday time, but the economic climate is awful.

It’s a national holiday in Japan today. This was a lucky bounce for Tokyo, which saw the Nikkei’s biggest drop for over a month last Friday – that is, if today’s other Asian markets are anything to go by….they all fell sharply.

In a couple of weeks time, the European mainland shuts up shop for the August holiday. And from more or less now onwards, the Wall St summer season will mean lots of empty desks.

It’s a holiday everyone needs very badly. And while it’ll probably slow the pace of events – a good thing – it won’t change the train timetable.

We have a 1914-style timetable in motion now because globalism’s insanity was always going to produce one. This has been apparent for over a year, but last week’s events almost certainly broadened the awareness of this fact….and today’s news that the IMF/EU loan has been withdrawn from Hungaru won’t help the mood. (Importantly, neither will the little-reported pressure on the G20 from the IMF to give it a lot more money for ‘other crises’).

While outside observers may see the growing crisis as random, it isn’t remotely like that: it merely reflects the ricochet effect. It’s as if another region commits suicide or shoots itself in the foot – and the bullet bounces elsewhere to injure others. With globalism, this is absolutely inevitable.

It seems that the US Fed heard the European news (Spain on short-term borrowing with local government going bust) followed swiftly by reports of a China slowdown and speculation about sinobank borrowing. The Fed’s consequently pessimistic statement produced lower confidence in Asia, and a disappointing launch for the China Agribank. Today’s Hungarian rhapsody will lower confidence in the eurozone, aided and abetted by obviously frantic eurobank attempts to fudge the stress tests: the Asians are already in retreat, and my guess is that New York will open in a dark mood.

The other piece of analysis that was hugely influential in Washington last week concerned the near-certainty that Greek contagion must now result in fiscal tightening for almost everyone in the euro region. This ‘automatic’ drop in a ready market for US goods seems to have clinched the nature of the Fed’s statement.

“America is now the problem” wrote one eminent journalist, but next week it will be Europe again, and after that China….and then back to the US again. If folks can’t agree about what to do, it’s inevitable that the bullets will fly everywhere.