Hunker down folks, winter's coming. This recession is going to be brutal. It's going to bite hard and last long, and there's not a thing we can do about it except pray for the storms to pass. Even the money market men are sounding rattled these days, spouting unremitting voodoo gibberish about external shocks and giddy turmoil.

There is no controlling this beast. Weird weather has knocked global food
production into a cocked hat. Oil prices have been hiked into oblivion by an evil cartel of greedy bastards from Texas to Dubai. The Russians have a stranglehold on the gas, and can do pretty much what they damn well please. China has all the production, and the ability to put  a million troops on the ground at very short notice. Nobody's stepping up to mess with those boys these days.

The UK and the US have not seen anything like it for a decade and a half, when cocaine was still cool and any idiot could suck at the teat of the markets. That time around will seem like the village dance by the time this beast has ripped through. Economies have been built to just-in-time delivery. Everything from supermarkets to factories is dependent on in-goods arriving right on time, from a never ending chain of delivery trucks out on the roads. What's left of industry here has the death mark on it. The service sector depends on customers with money. We will see terrible things unfurl when the supermarkets start to run short.

The US and the UK are leaderless. Two lame ducks swimming in the pond with their enemies circling to the scent of a drop of hot blood on rusty wire.  Sure, it's the crazy news days of August, when journalists will seize on anything resembling a story and shake it like a rag. The hardest days are ahead, my friends. The winter will come. Wait till the cold starts to bite and energy soars. Brown and Bush will be shown up for the impotent jackasses they are, and there's not a shadow of any decent leaders in the wings. Everyone was hoping for a couple of years to let things settle, get some rest, and work out how the hell to get out of the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No can do. The governments have abandoned their slim hopes of controlling domestic economic conditions through tinkering with interest rates. In the UK, as in the US and Europe, it's done by  blank committees of the great and powerful whose every word is so heavily weighed it drives them into a paralysed frenzy. They are vicious people behind closed doors.

The government here has crushed the housing market to a standstill with ill-placed briefs to the hungry journalists. Everyone who's been living on house value book-profits is going to reel like a stunned fish. Anyone in the press with any real clout has cleared out for two weeks on a beach or playing in an elite resort somewhere with the high-rollers they engage with every day. This time of year, the decision makers are gone. The political and corporate worlds drift into a passive holding operation.

Meanwhile Russia launches its invasion forces for its usual reasons within reasons, while half the country watches Beijing and most of the rest soak up some sap called Big Brother and slowly poison their minds into unconsciousness. 

The winter is coming, folks, and it's going to be a doozy. Hold on to everything you love and take good care.                                                                          ENDS