"World plc" is unwell. Before anyone gets the wrong
idea – this is after all the Finance Column –
I'm not about to stray into areas medical, psychological or
spiritual. But after a period of extreme economic intoxication and
dissipation, it seems appropriate to echo The Spectator magazine
which, whenever the lifestyle of its late "low life"
correspondent took its inevitable effect on his health and
reliability, would simply post the notice "Jeffrey Bernard is
unwell" in place of his column.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the onset of the present
financial crisis dates back to 2008. But that only tells us when
the disease presented – the symptoms were certainly there
well before 2008. In Spain's case, for example, the housing
boom that ended in such a spectacular crash had been building for a
decade or more.
