Return of the Prodigal

There's been a lot of water under the bridge since my last post (I'm afraid Mr. Zuckerberg's Facebook was too captivating), but it would be wrong to neglect a good thing when it's crying out for attention, so here goes!

Are we in the final days of civilisation? To listen to news broadcasts or to read the papers, you'd think so. But it's also important to be aware of the vested interests steering public discussion to their own advantage, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the panic over the "eurozone crisis".

It was only days after the TARP legislation was passed by the US Congress that I heard a commentator remark on how the taxpayer bailout of the banks would inevitably lead to a sovereign debt crisis, yet we still have the likes of Angela Merkel being apparently surprised at peripheral nations finding themselves in debt. Can this be for real? Of course not. The strongest nations on the continent are simply practicing Rahm Emanuel's injunction of "never wasting a good crisis" and exploiting the turmoil on the markets and the weakness of European solidarity to ram through further centralisation of power in Europe. Clever? Yes. Welcome? Hardly.