I posted this on the main blog page earlier in the week, but due to a tech problem or two (all my fault), it's taken a day or two to get it up here. Sorry!

'Meltdown’ seems an appropriate metaphor for the week in which the world’s markets crashed then rose then crashed then . . . and in which Ross Garnaut handed over his final climate change report. The first should hardly have been surprising, and nor should the weakness of the second. If we are living in a global speculative economy founded on bad debt, then sooner or later something has to give. In effect the markets are holding people to ransom. If we don’t feed the beast by bailing them out, then they will ruin us. And if the government is pandering to business on all matters environmental, as satirised on last night’s wonderfully apt and timely episode of The Hollow Men, then a weak-kneed stance on climate change (25 per cent reductions at best), with anything stronger, or even that, being denounced by the usual suspects, is to be expected. Meltdown indeed. Read more . . .