When you don’t know shit, try true grit.

As the world becomes more complex, we know less and less about what to do. In December last year, Newscorp announced it didn’t know what to do with Myspace – except lose money on it. A year earlier, Google admitted it didn’t know how to make money out of YouTube. You’d have to think the shareholders didn’t entirely appreciate that honesty, on the grounds that they assumed these giants of business had a game plan before they signed the cheque. But it’s not that unusual: in 2008, Bob Diamond snapped up the investment branch of Lehman without knowing what to do with it. But it was very big and very cheap, so he bought it.I’ve seen decisions taken on far worse bases than that.

Thomas Edison once remarked that we don’t know a millionth of one per cent about anything, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the inventor was an incurable optimist. In 2004, the National Genome Center in the US admitted it didn’t know how to define race and ethnicity. If they don’t, who does? Worse yet, they still don’t know what to do in order to work it out. This is like Alex Ferguson not knowing how to do a referee’s job better than the referee.

Most of us don’t even know what we want. We think we do, but we really don’t. We only know what we don’t want….or so says the motivational outfit PickTheBrain. ‘We aren’t getting anywhere,” it says on its site, “because we don’t know where to go”. It’s the best summation I’ve yet seen of the Cameron Coalition.

Rick Perry last night called Welfare in the US “a Ponzi scheme”. I’d be willing to bet quite a lot of money that Perry doesn’t know what a Ponzi scheme is. And this morning BST, David Cameron has ‘explained’ that he will back recommendations to build a firewall around Britain’s retail banking operations, but he wants to delay the implementation of the structural upheaval for a number of years. (Even ‘2015’ as a goal has now disappeared.) It seems the PM is anxious about the impact of radical and costly reform on the banking sector at a time of flat growth, and is ‘opposed to anything that would undermine business lending and impede the recovery’. In making that statement in that way, David Cameron is demonstrating that he doesn’t understand the banking system – that he doesn’t know what to do.

All over the world, people don’t know what to do. And if enough people down below get to know that the people up top don’t know what to do, who knows what might happen?

When Ben Bernanke rises later today (around 6.30 pm BST)  it will rapidly become apparent that he knows no more about what to do than he did the last time he said nothing at Jackson Hole. But oddly, Ben’s predicament is being helped by the fact that quite a few regional Reserve Members think they know better what to do.

“Given the level of opposition coming out of the woodwork, it will be very difficult for the chairman to pre-emptively announce any further moves for monetary policy,” said Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, on Tuesday. Which will be a big relief to Ben, because he doesn’t know what to do.

On July 26th this year, Christine Lagarde knew what to do. Accordingly, she urged Greece to accept austerity measures in exchange for the Troika’s bailout offer – even though the economy there was already contracting at a horrific 5%. On August 27th, Lagarde still knew what to do, but her credibility was roughed up a little by the fact that what she now knew what to do was different to that which she’d known a month earlier. She told the Jackson Hole folks – who’d already seen how little Ben knew about what to do – that more action on bank recapitalisation and economic stimulation was urgently required. Nobody knew what to with her after that.

The bottom line on this one is that Christine doesn’t know what to do, and so she’s brought in a Deputy at the IMF to see if he can help. He’s from Beijing, and his name is Zhu Min. Mr Zhu was deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China, an institution that has tried five rate rises in a year, but still doesn’t know what to do about property inflation. The People’s Bank also has a new Don’t Know concerning where to export stuff now nobody in the West has any money to buy solar garden lights any more. It thus seems highly likely that Zhu Min doesn’t know what to do. Given Lagarde’s maths blindness, it could be she thinks two don’t knows equal an “I know”. Nobody knows: we can but hope.

Also today, EU Central Bank boss Jean-Claude Trichet gets his chance to show he doesn’t know what to do either. JCT was very clear about what to do in the Spring, when he whacked in two interest-rate rises to an economy turning back into recession. On this occasion, nobody in the whole of Europe knew what to do about a guy who clearly didn’t know what he was doing. An eerie silence followed for a month or so, after which Trichet’s fear of inflation morphed into a morbid fear of slump. Jean-Claude doesn’t know what to do about a slump, because he’s never experienced one. But it’s OK, because now he knows not to put rates up again any time soon. Either way, the markets want rate cuts to get things moving again. M. Trichet will do nothing, because he doesn’t know what to do.

This leaves us with just Barack Obama, a thought that’s pretty terrifying in its own right. The US President, you will all know by now, knows that We Can, he just doesn’t know what to do so that we can Can, if you follow. And if you do, please tell me, because I don’t. Today, Obama will wax lyrical before Congress about how to stimulate jobs, and thus give a stubborn 9.1% of the population something to do. So far on the All-Knowing front, the President has a patchy track-record. In the worst output and highest debt year in American history, Barack signed off the Healthcare Bill. Given that the only thing we know about the Act for certain is that it’s going to cost a shitload of money, this one was up there with Jean-Claude Trichet’s ill-advised rate rises. Obama’s one specific journey into job creation – a solar energy company – has swiftly turned into a grisly bankruptcy amid cries of naughtiness. And his Save the Homeowner mortgage scheme cost quite a bit more per beneficiary than expected. In fact, the combined resources of the FBI, Fed Reserve and Facebook have failed to identify a single mortgagee who benefited. Let’s put Barack Obama down as a Don’t Know What To Do.

I often say I know what to do, but I don’t really. I know what I’d do to stop it happening again, ever – but that would involve mass slaughter on a Pol Pot scale, and anyway nobody will listen until it’s all gone doo-doo. So my one crumb of comfort is to observe that we must look for inspiration from unlikely quarters. And my choice today is the late John Wayne.

Don’t knock it. John Wayne was saddled with the real name Marion Morrisson, and he sure as hell knew what to do: he changed it at the first opportunity. But he also said some seriously inane things along the way, in much the same way as Peter Sellers’ character Chance the Gardener in Being There. In my humble opinion, the time is ripe for inanity.

In the movie The Searchers, Wayne famously remarked, “A man’s godda dooo warra man’s godda dooo”. I like the sound of this: there is an air of obligation about it. Even if a man doesn’t know what to do, he may still know what he must do. And in the end, what everyone in the Elite (who doesn’t know what to do) must do – as always – is exactly what the banks want them to do….so that they, the Omniscient Ones, can carry on demonstrating that, when it comes to not knowing what to do, they have everyone else licked.

Only then, I conclude, will those who know what to do emerge, and do it. Until then – as The Slog has insisted since its inception – “IABATO!”…It’s all Bollocks, and that’s Official.

If you enjoyed this, you’ll probably also like   Next time, let’s keep the attic locked.

Independence now for Dacre’s McBigots.