“I watched two embarrassed St Bernard dogs pad through the snow yesterday, each with a pink copy of (the Financial Times) tied under its neck”. An interesting sight from a canine savvy journalist (how can a dog look embarrassed?) reporting from The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The dogs were most probably a publicity stunt from the Financial Times, which has been using billboards to advertise the FT being carried by a mountain rescue dog, thereby implying the FT’s trustworthy credentials and the avalanche sized crisis the world faces. But what is going to be the next casualty of the economic avalanche of greed, bad debt and dodgy management? And who will the metaphorical St Bernard rescue first?
It looks like it’s too late for Iceland. In November, the country was forced to take out a £8.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, and several European countries, to keep it’s banking system in good health. The IMF, displaying all the foresight of Mystic Meg with a drink problem, predicted the country would cope well with the economic crisis. Now Iceland’s economy is predicted to shrink by 10%. Last week protests became more and more heated, with Iceland’s police resorting to the use of teargas for the first time in 60 years. In what’s being called the “Household Revolution”, one in ten Icelanders took to the streets to bang pots and pans to protest the government’s handling of the crisis. Prime Minister Geir Haarde decided to call it a day - even though four days before his resignation he said he wasn’t going anywhere until elections in May. So the Government of Iceland has become the first government to fall due to the current crisis. On the plus side, the crisis has ushered in the world’s first openly gay prime minister; Johanna Sigurdardotir was appointed steward prime minister until the next elections. Unfortunately, it seems our St Bernard was too busy pissing up a tree to save Iceland from economic melt down.
“The Brits should take a leaf out of our book and throw out their government!", one Icelandic protester told reporters. The French, however, didn’t even need to be told. Should the St Bernard turn to gay Paris before the city starts singing old revolution songs ? Too late again, it seems. The “Black Thursday” protests saw over a million French workers strike and thousands rolled out the old cliché of taking to the streets and burning…well, anything really. And as usual, numbers were argued: mains unions estimated 380,000 marched through the Paris, while the Interior Ministry estimated 65,000. Either way, the Sarkozy government was keen to play down the movement; “by no means exceptional”, was how the Cabinet Minister described the day of protests. Indeed, in France not even a decapitated monarch counts as exceptional.
So our St Bernard sleeps on. Surely the snow melting beneath it’s paws will rouse it to action? For The World Economic Forum has reported that it will cost the world $10 trillion from now until 2030 in order to save the planet from global warming. And then there is the small matter of the $65 million needed by the UN to feed Zimbabwe’s starving 7 million people. That is, if there is any money left after the £283 billion bank-bailout by France, or the £500 billion bank-bailout by the UK, or $700 billion bank-bailout by the US, and so and so forth until we all become sick of the letter B. Would these be the same banks run by men who pocketed just over £1 billion as the credit crisis began to boil over? Put such questions to one side, our St Bernard is awake. What’s that boy? Bankers in trouble? Down the ol’ finical black hole? Our St Bernard leads on...
Photos provided by: askacopywriter.blogspot.com,