The Mayan Economic Forum

As the elites, that brought us to the outskirts of economic armageddon, fly into Davos in their private jets and helicopters, stay in $1000 a night hotel rooms and have $500 dinners, I just thought that a few of the hurdles they'll have to jump over in the next day or two include:

225 million people unemployed around the world

A third of the people on the planet either poor, unemployed or both
1% of the world's families own 40% of the wealth
Wages as a percentage of GDP at an all-time low
Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP at an all-time high

Jump over them they will with the usual clap-trap - austerity, non-regulation, free-trade, market-forces, more loans, less debt and all the usual conflicting advice all wrapped-up and tied-off with a neat bow of "confidence" cheer-leading. Undoubtedly the word "innovation" will be bandied about until it becomes even more meaningless. Also expect to see the brief rise of the "Austrian School" of economic gibberish.

What is missing from the debate in Davos is the Mayan School of Economics. A school that predicts the end of the world this year and therefore, by definition, offers no pie-in-the-sky long term solutions. The best feature of the Mayan School is no matter what advice they give they simultaneously admit that, given the circumstances, it is totally pointless. In contrast, the other Schools of Economics won't admit to the pointlessness of their advice even after it has proven disastrous. Given that the Mayans have vanished well prior to their expected 2012 departure date it would seem appropriate to call the present deluded fiasco "The Mayan Economic Forum" as the attendees world will end about the same time.

Just to add to the upcoming potential for even greater misery the Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end $US dollar dealings for oil - the last guy who attempted this was Saddam and shorthly thereafter a heavily armed $US dollar invaded him. The old "weapons of mass destruction" fable is raising it's ugly head about Iran and Seal Team 6 is at it again. All in the cause of driving stakes through the hearts of imaginary evil empires.

Possibly we should be hammering imaginary stakes through some of the 1%'s hearts - in the manner of one of those cocktail hors douvers with several comestibles impaled on one stick. Banker - cheese - politician - green pepper - economist - olive.

While we all descend into poverty and deprivation preventing us from affording either the weed killer or alcoholic beverage of our choice I leave you with the enlightened view of one Henry Ford who chose voluntarily to raise the pay of his workers — so they could afford to buy his cars - unfortunately he was a Nazi.