What we’re seeing now is more Bluebeard than Bilderberger

Where will it all end? Now that the jumped up have talked up, pumped up, and propped up the global ‘economy’ by spending all our taxpayer monies, they ready themselves for the next great heist – stealing our savings and, in between, quietly raiding the with-profits policies of the pension and assurance providers. What will they want next – our children? Not enough to bugger the little devils, let’s traffick them as well. Then our houses, and….er, then what? Print more money, probably.

A child of five could work out that at the end of this road lie still-rising Western debt and consumers too impoverished to consume. But it is the Cliff that Dare Not Speak its Name in the mainstream press. America is ‘booming’, the British economy is ‘on the mend’, the number of jobless in the EU ‘has fallen’, the US payroll numbers ‘were higher than expected’. It’s bollocks – every last word of it. America’s share of world trade continues to fall, the UK continues to have no manufacturing base….merely banks about to fall over at any minute, and job hours and wage levels are still falling throughout the West almost without exception. The ‘developed’ world is like the top of a raging waterfall, with a few political midgets sitting on rocks, waving reeds about while yelling, “Straws! Straws! Last chance to buy your straws ‘ere”.

The amusing thing about it all (it’s not at all amusing, but then I do have a history of mental illness) is that when the dam finally bursts, there will be a stampede of columnists all rushing to declare “We could see it coming, this was inevitable” followed by a second wave asking “How was this allowed to happen?” To which my retort will be, “Well Peregrine luv, you were in the Coach & Horses getting pissed, sweetie”.

For the moment, however, the circular and largely pointless argument that gets passed around the blogosphere continues to fascinate the Left: are they all mad/stupid, or is it a conspiracy? Is this a carefully mapped-out Bilderberger plan rubber-stamped by Common Purpose, or is it just the self-delusion that enters a mind long consumed by pointless greed?

I confess to being firmly in the latter camp, but then the emergence of hitherto laughable proofs of conspiracy over the last year has, I will confess, shaken my certainty somewhat. I’d been convinced about gold manipulation and off-balance sheet sales to China since 2006. But now the Libor rate thing is in the public domain…and then the brazen stuff in Cyprus, plus the “just one last heave” nonsense in relation to QE….well, it make you think.

One thing above all has made me wonder most – and that is not the thieving that took place in Nicosia: it is the fact that fully eleven major Sovereign States were forced to admit immediately afterwards that they too had Open Bank Reconciliation (OBR) plans. This doesn’t go anywhere near to proving a conspiracy; but it does show that warped minds rarely differ. This isn’t just onanistic analysis for the sake of it: it means that if smart observers temporarily tune their minds to the relevant Warp Factor, they should be able to predict what comes next.

We should be able to, but speaking for myself, I can’t. You see, I don’t have a F**king Stupid setting in my brain. Sometimes I wish I did, but I don’t. All I can see is a debt about 130,000 times bigger than any austerity programme, an economic model based on consumption stimulation, and policies clearly designed to cut the consumption balls off everyone. Call me wacky, but there is no sense to it.

In that context, there are in turn two more schools of thought: “They’re just playing for time by being seen to do something” (Daily Mail) or “It’s all a plot to wipe us out” (Moscow Syntax Collectors’ Weekly, now merged with the People’s Front for the Smashing of Toe-reescum).

The first of these may well be true, but after extra time has been played, what are they expecting then – penalties? Again, senseless. And the second version, well, it’s all a bit green ink, exclamation marks, and notes up the margins, don’t you think? It runs something like this:

“The fundamental inner flaws of the capitalist betrayal of the working classes have come to a head and now we see the boss class has no alternative left but to exterminate all the people left starving around the world before the popular risings reach their peak and take vengeance on those exploiters who have dripped slavery into the minds of the media-hypnotised proletariat.”

Aside from the Leninspart tendency to not so much mix as hispeed-blend metaphors, the leap here can be spotted at Line One with ‘has no alternative left but to exterminate’. I must confess, I could foresee about twenty other alternatives, but haven’t the faintest idea how a collective group probably no bigger than 150,000 people could exterminate 5 billion folks in a murderous mood based on serious food shortage.

So what’s the point of it all? The answer is, I suspect, none whatsoever. Over the last seven years I have met many bankers, wealth managers, market traders, politicians and bureaucrats. In private after a few armagnacs, those of them with a brain will admit: the everlasting growth paradigm is dead, and the banking derivatives alchemy is about to immolate the sorcerer’s laboratory. From here on, it’s damage limitation.

That’s my end conclusion. There are variations of conviction along the way: I think Cameron probably doesn’t get it, but I’m sure the Treasury, Mark Carney, George Osborne and the Newscories see it coming – and plan to profit from it. Kenneth Clarke without doubt gets it: that’s why he’s buying all the agricultural land he can lay his hands on. And the Buffets and the Soros followers get it – that’s why they’re divesting themselves of every last stock based in finance and manufacturing. Obama sort of gets it, and is busy making plans for his survival: these include the National Guard being given sweeping new powers, and homeland surveillance operations going into overdrive. Tell you what, you didn’t expect Hitler to be black, did you? Eh? Go on, admit it. Neither did I.

It will end in collapse, the aftermath of which is impossible to predict. Meanwhile, the key and obvious policy for people with the funds is get out of stocks yesterday, spread your money around today, and buy large assets tomorrow. Beyond that, nobody knows. And anyone who tells you otherwise is either a fool or a liar – and possibly both.

My position (fairly normal at this site) is that there is no conspiracy. There is a halfway house called cons’ piracy. A bunch of sociopathic convicts are sailing their bounty-boats around the welfare services, banking centres and legislatures of the world. Listen carefully and you will hear their blood-curdling cries:

“Yo-ho-ho and a throttle of bum! Ha-harrgh me hearties, we’ll be a-sailin’ on the noon wench, ha-harrgh! Splice yer leg-brace and ravish the cabin-boy – we be settin’ sail for gore and blooty, or is it booty and glory, I can never remember, ha-haaargh!”

Yesterday at The Slog: The real reasons for that £6m NHS merger cost