I used to read the business section in the English language newspapers out of curiosity, but now, I read it out of fear. I read that there is a global financial crisis, and then I read two contradictory conclusions, one saying that the financial crisis is over, and another saying that it has not even started yet. Now I admit that I used to read the headlines or maybe the first paragraphs only, keeping only Arab-related economic news and discarding the rest of the business sections in the rubbish bin (before taking the newspapers back home and distributing my time between reading the news, commentaries and reports and solving crossword puzzles). But today, fear is the code word in all what I read. I want to know whether the pound sterling in my pocket will become a Sudanese pound overnight one day, or whether the U.S dollar value will become equivalent to that of the Hong Kong dollar ‘in a day, in a night', like the song goes. The major currency exchange rates are fluctuating up and down every day. Then Greece went bankrupt and the Euro plummeted. Then again, the European Central Bank and other international banks came up with a plan to assist the Greek economy, and the Euro went back up again. On the other hand, when the Euro goes up, the dollar automatically goes down, as the major currencies are probably governed by the ‘up and down' game, which we played as children, and which bankers play as adults, before being awarded bonuses of 47 million dollars a year, and sometimes even more than a hundred million. Then there is also the yen and the pound sterling, and perhaps they are somewhere in the in-between against the dollar and the euro. In fact I have read so much about this that I have now mastered the conversion of dollars into sterling and vice versa...should I be given a battery-powered pocket calculator. When I read until I begin worrying about the fate of the three dollars in my pocket, I seek out the help of the colleagues from the business section at Al-Hayat to explain the situation to me. But they usually make it worse and I now think that I need a psychiatrist; however, the financial crisis did not leave me with enough money to pay a psychiatrist's fees. At any rate, I am still better than the stock broker in New York who wanted to hang himself but could not afford a rope. I have daily questions that reflect the news that I read. For example, Greece went bankrupt, which is the duty of everyone that lives around the Mediterranean Sea and knows how to live, unlike the frugal Germans who are so careful with money that the Catholics among them uphold the protestant ethics of not spending, or go Calvinist, the equivalent of our own revisionists. Then I read that Greece received assistance to help it stand back on its feet (or on the feet of the European Union to be precise), but then I read on the same day that the Greek sovereign debt constitutes 127 percent of the country's GDP. If this is true then Lebanon becomes a creditor in comparison, and not a country indebted by forty billion dollars. A few days ago, the last budget in the term of the incumbent British parliament was issued by the British Government. Here, fraud and lies were repeated, as the current budget deficit stands at 12 percent, and the government pledged to reduce it to 4.4 percent in the 2014-2015 budget. However, the general elections will be held in two months and the conservatives are likely to win, so how can the government promise its citizens of actions to be taken after it is gone, and which it did not achieve while it is still in power? I say: it's all ‘gobbledygook'. The European Union has in turn practiced swindling and fraud, as it asked Britain to reduce its deficit and threatened it. However, Britain is not in the euro zone, and the European Union cannot impose any sanctions against it. Also note that the European Union's declared desire to maintain deficit at three percent and less is something the Euro zone countries themselves are not adhering to, let alone Britain or other countries. I was so interested in the [economic] issue, that I read an article by the prominent financier George Soros, focused on ‘reforming the mortgage system'. All what I understood from the article was that the public-private partnership model as in the example of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is unsound. I did not understand exactly why, but I read that the losses of mortgage enterprises have amounted to 400 billion dollars. And so I will content myself in the future to read nothing but his political articles that I do understand. Anyway, if we add to this the 1.6 trillion dollar deficit in the U.S budget at present, and every previous and forthcoming deficit, we find ourselves before surreal numbers like six, or nine trillion dollars or more. Everyone lost, and yet, I did not hear about anyone who profited, although we were taught that business is all about losses and profits, so perhaps the whole matter was divine justice to punish those who destroyed the lives of ‘helpless' people because of their greed. While the principle in dealing with people should be ‘scratch my back and I will scratch yours', it seems that in the stock exchange, it is ‘scratch my back and I will stab yours.' My personal opinion is that Ronald Reagan caused the American and global economic crisis in the eighties, and then George W. Bush caused a bigger crisis in the first decade of this century. But then I also have doubts that shake this conviction, as I am often prejudiced against American policy, and perhaps there are other causes behind the crisis. My other conviction, which remains unshaken until further notice, is that people will always lose by speculating in the stock market, or on gambling, taxes, women, and investing in Arab countries; however, losing with and on women remains the best loss. [email protected]
