A New World Order?

Today I finished the first draft of a new book that replaces one I’d finished a year before, because that one was scooped by subsequent world events in a way that made what I’d written appear derivative rather than original.  It also took a year for the fist to heal that I drove through the wall (thankfully between the studs) when I realized I must “stick it in a drawer” and start over. 

All of which is a long way of saying my mind has been elsewhere this week.  I am not from the outliners which means that in those final days at the end of a new novel, when all must come together and I have no idea how that precisely shall occur until the last word is written, I am lost in another in world.

And that brings me to today’s piece.  Another world.

Mykonos, where I live most of the year, is filled with interesting visitors these days.  They come from everywhere, good countries and bad.  As to which countries fall into which category, let’s just say it depends upon the perceiver’s particular frame of reference.

Yes, very few judgments seem absolute these days (beyond, for instance, I love my grandchildren unconditionally), which is why I’m amazed when educated, informed people from so many parts of the world seem to have come to the same conclusion independent of each other. 

Now, I’m not saying I agree, but I am saying many people I’ve met seem to think this way.  So, are you ready to launch into me as the messenger?  I can take it.  Like I said, I just finished a new book and feel invincible.  At least until tomorrow, when the rewriting starts.

Here is the point.  Really two.

The western world is utterly lacking in capable political leadership and that has allowed a dramatic shift of extraordinary power into the hands of a very small group having no interest in any political order beyond how to use it to expand their own wealth and power.  Yes, Virginia, we are back to talking about a conspiracy among the world’s bankers, but to be fair, this is not confined to its bankers, but applies to the financial system as a whole.

Over the last decade there has been such a dramatic consolidation of power in the financial world that today the decisions of perhaps a dozen human beings at the apex of those pyramids affect the lives of virtually every soul on the planet.  And if they act in concert, consciously or unconsciously, bond and commodities markets are raped, companies destroyed, countries fall.

An example I’ve been cited on more than one occasion by very different sources is this: Bad harvests made wheat prices vulnerable, wheat became the target of speculators, the price of flour multiplied, the poor could no longer afford their bread, a government did not intervene to help ease the suffering (for whatever reason you chose you believe), the people rioted, the government fell.  Can you name that country?  I won’t.

So, is it true?  Is the western world truly captive to the greed of financial manipulators because its putative political leadership is not capable?  Or is it something else.  Am I beginning to sound like a Greek, where a conspiracy is seen in the number of raisins in a cereal box? 

I think I shall go back to writing fiction … it’s so much more believable.

Jeff—Saturday