Mario Draghi told the world’s media this afternoon that he has a “vast array of instruments”  to control market interest rates.

I wonder how many Sloggers remember the exact same claim being made by Bernanke when, three years ago, he was asked what he might attempt if QE failed. Well, it failed: but instead of admitting that and pulling another solution out of his proprietary tool kit, Ben just kept on saying that more is more….as opposed to less, which is obvious to anyone who can add up.

Call me cynical here, but I suspect Draghi is also the owner of a bare cupboard. Let’s face it, if he had a bazooka, he’d have unleashed it by now. Tim Geithner said that he had a bazooka and Europe could take advantage of it. But we’ve never been shown Geithner’s bazooka….and I’d be willing to bet there’s nobody more glad about that than Timmy himself.

I’d love to simply observe that these people are full of sh*t, but I can’t – because sh*t has some substance to it, and they don’t. The closest they get to substance is piss and wind.

Back on Planet Earth meanwhile, plunging profits in mainland Europe blew a hole in Tesco’s recovery plan, as the grocer said first-half trading profit slumped 68% in its European division, with massive losses in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Turkey as well as in Ireland. So given the vital importance of all that, UK Prime Minister David Cameron suggested that the general election in 2015 will be a choice between the “pro-business” Conservative party and what he called the “anti-business” Labour party. There’s just one flaw in Mr Cameron’s argument: he no more wants to leave the EU than Labour does. And, um, research shows that it is that very same EU that is totally f**king up Britain’s export progress.

By the way, I truly adore the potty idea of presenting Labour as anti-business. Granted, they know nothing about how to run a business (or a Ministry, or a budget, or a country) but the idea that they’d prefer a zero-transaction world is beyond daft. For the Etonian moron to go to the country in 2015 with a message suggesting “Conservatives are for eating, but Labour is for starvation” is going to look (I would venture to suggest) a bit bloody silly. But that said, never underestimate the untutored ignorance of the British voter. I find it amusingly ironic that the very education system lauded by public school Labour Ministers in the 1960s has produced a nation of dickheads determined to vote for every circus on offer – be it con doppia Mozzarella pizzas on the NHS, or only public schoolboys ever going to University ever again, so help me God.

I’m going away now to eat my vegetarian curry. It will be delicious, and not raise my blood pressure in any way whatsoever.

Earlier at The Slog: Straight-talking Dave socks it to Conference