The Islamists having won a sweeping victory in Cairo, the military there has done the decent thing, and granted itself sweeping powers. It is the Military Spring a little late. Everyone enslaved throughout the world will be encouraged by seeing just how easy it is to grant yourself sweeping powers, if only you have the courage. And the guns. ‘After decades in which Washington has been the Middle East’s dominant outside player, the pro-democracy demonstrations of the Arab Spring have changed the equation,’ says Reuters today, right on the ball and up to full speed as usual.

The narrow election victory for Greece’s pro-bailout New Democracy has been welcomed by world leaders, who thought for a second there that this democracy thing was going to send everything tits up – but now they can relax safe and secure in the knowledge that Greece will do as it’s told by unelected functionaries, and America will do as it’s told by re-electing Barack Obama. The Slog thinks they’re counting chickens after they’ve been cooked; let’s wait and see what double-crossing today and Tuesday bring. But Asian stocks rose and the euro’s value rose, so everything’s going to be alright everywhere else, which matters far more than a small country being battered into submission.

So relieved are all these world leaders, they’ve awarded themselves another jolly, this time in Mexico, so the G20 can meet to assess the degree to which nothing has changed since the last time they met last November. Both rich and developing countries are engaged in a sort of Synchronised Slowdown, another vote for the good order of planetary mercantilism – except of course for the EU, which is still in reverse as a result of its dash for austere growth.

“The overwhelming focus of this G-20 is going to be reflecting the evolving debate around growth and the critical importance of global growth and global recovery,” said Mike Froman, the White House’s top international economic official. “The European piece is the most central piece at the moment in that effort.” This is what I said in the preceding paragraph, except that Mike added two globals, two growths, and one recovery in order to make his audience relatively cool with shambolic inaction, unfulfilled promises, and the pretty obvious fact that nobody has a clue what will happen next, or what to do about it.

Over in Ye Olde Threadneedle Street Branch of Global Ready-Standing Incorporated, there is some rancour in the Family Planning Clinic about whether they should simply do as they were ordered during George Osborne’s Mansion House speech last week, or – being fully independent – ignore the daft little twerp. During a regular FPC meeting on Friday, BoE Governor Mervyn King was subjected to some vociferous outbursts on the subject of remaining independent, but the Committee is split anyway as to….yes, you guessed it, whether to go for austerity or growth. It’s good to see some fresh, creative thinking kicking in at last.

In his speech, the chancellor said the BoE’s Financial Policy Committee should “no longer focus narrowly on safeguarding the banking sector”. Safeguarding the entire mess sounds to me like an abnormally wide angle task rather than a narrow focus, but let’s not get hung up on terminology: what the Draper was really saying is this: we’ve screwed up the creation of growth bigtime, so now I want some ideas from you lot about how the banks are going to help, rather than simply helping themselves…which has been the general tenor of things thus far. None of this crap matters a jot any more, but I find it an interesting diversion, and fun to watch the inane in pursuit of the innumerate.

And finally, another message for all the young diddums who troll onto this site moaning about how we incorrigibly greedy and wealth-amassing Baby Boomers have stolen all their money by, you know, not just giving it to them when they asked for it. The Telegraph reports this morning that all we lucky Silvers have lost fully £18billion thanks to Zirp and QE in the last year alone. Imagine how much retail stimulus that dosh could’ve added to the economy. There are roughly 19.5m homes in the UK where the retired folks eke out their inflation-eroded lives. So we’ve lost, on average, £880 each. As we don’t go to ritzy bars or blow sixty quid a head on dinner at Carluccio’s, that probably isn’t too serious a loss. Just don’t assume, in your self-pitying youthful arrogance, that we wouldn’t like to do all that stuff.