Off the topic of either the cruising lifestyle or living on the dirt in Shelburne, we have been crouched in front of the TV lately watching Europe financially implode while protesters “Occupy” downtown areas around the world protesting “Globalization” and “Capitalism”, and I am struck by one major thing – how come this is so much of a shock to everyone? I mean, as recently as five years ago the biggest North American fear was that the Euro was going to become the dominant currency over the US$ for stabilization and exchange. I remember on my Yugoslavia tour the Black Market for US$ would give an unbelievable exchange for Euros and you would need a suitcase to carry the local currency that you could get for a couple of greenbacks! Now, suddenly, everything is collapsing and governments, businesses, credit agencies, financiers and fund managers are all, supposedly, caught by surprise. The fact that one government would lend even more money to another government and permit and even encourage national and private banks to do the same right up to the point where countries began to fail is incredible. I know that when a private person applies for a loan their entire financial situation is examined and if certain standards aren’t met the loan is refused. Why would those agencies that determine national credit ratings continue to give A ratings to countries that were so over extended and deeply in debt with no obvious assets to balance the ledger is mind boggling. Are they really all that incompetent? I expect not. Rather, I think that what caught them by surprise was how quickly it happened. I suspect that a real and honest audit of what happened would show that global financiers and businesses were only to happy to continue juggling and robbing Peter to pay Paul, back and forth to make their annual statements look good so that they would get their big pay cheques and annual bonuses for as long as they could. It’s the same sort of thing that has happened on a “smaller” scale with some major international corporations of late, with some (but probably not enough) corporate executives facing or serving jail time. The implosion happened before they could escape I guess.

On a different scale the same sort of thing happened 25 years ago with the collapse of the North Atlantic fishery. Everything was going along great with private citizens, major fish producers, and all riding the wave, so to speak, of the great resource off our coast. Around about the same time I had been working for one of the fish processing firms and clearly remember the plans for expansion and talks of protein biomass to feed the world populations. Then, suddenly – panic. The fish had suddenly become a declining resource. Scientists began to appear as talking heads on TV trying to explain what had happened while avoiding any blame as to why they hadn’t seen it coming. At one point since major corporations had the ear of governments the blame was attempted to be foisted on the inshore fisherman – the little guy with a 30’ boat who would go out daily to tend some longline or his traps. I mean, really!? In the end it turned out that the stock had been declining all along; the signs were all there if only someone had been prepared to notice and someone else had been prepared to act.

I guess it has been the same with the global financial situation – the signs were there but no one noticed, and if they did, no one was prepared to act.