Hang on a minute. I'm still here, you're still here. We still buy things which are expensive but affordable if you're careful about what you buy. Petrol's gone down in price. What's the problem?
I tell you what: The "misery" isn't in the supposed "crisis" that we're in. It's in the constant barrage of media hype that we're bombarded with day after day. I've been checking on its progress on Reuters. How long has the so-called "credit crunch" been the headline? Three weeks, a month?
But why? Have people stopped starving in the nation's poorest countries? Are the various altercations around the globe in a state of suspense? Is there no good news to report? (Don't tell me the standard line that no-one's interested in good news. This mentally disturbed minority are the sort who watch EastEnders and Celebrity Love Island, listen to vacuous music and use the word "cool" as if it actually means something. Enough said.)
Is it really such a bad a situation that everything else in the news has to be put on hold? Is it not suspicious that the term "credit crunch" is coined, and soon afterwards referred to as if it is real? (Credit to Channel 4 News last night, who ran a fascinating and off-beat cultural story about Lucian Freud campaigning to save a Titian painting.)
What is a "credit crunch", and where is it defined? If it is defined, was it defined by experts in the field - economists, philosophers, mathematicians? Somehow, I don't think so. If it were, then it has been very carefully hidden. Frankly, I find the politicians who must have come up with the idea laughable, and I find the people who are taken in by it laughable. I have to, because if I didn't laugh then I'd be depressed, which incidentally is what the people who make money out of market turbulence would like me to believe is happening to the economy. No doubt, that is the real reason for the invention of the term "credit crunch".
What a crap state of affairs that, not only does the news spread this tripe as if it's the end of the world, but people actually buy it, in more ways than one. Where's George Galloway when you need him?
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Update (30.10.08): Today's Reuters front-page headline mentions rising fears about the economy. Perhaps, just perhaps, media propaganda such as that same article might have something to do with it. Hmmm.
