It appears that our global situations and crises are shifting at an ever-increasing rate, which is probably a sign of the new world order. Our global communication networks are now capable of working overtime at a much more rapid clip than human minds can absorb.
It seemed only a few weeks ago the focus was on Russia versus Ukraine. We then moved over to the European Union and the Greek defaults on successive payments to creditors.
Then came the fall in oil prices, or should we say, the second round of oil price decreases, which led to the decrease in non-resident investments in North American oil industries.
In Canada, we not only had to contend with the resource-pricing declines in the entire commodities field, but housing prices continued to escalate in Vancouver and Toronto too, for some unexplained reason, while levelling off in other sectors.
Next came some natural disasters in the form of forest fires, both in Western Canada and northwestern United States.
Lately, we’ve knocked Greece out of our collective minds, and are now focused on Syrian refugees … how many each country could and should be able to accommodate, how quickly and under what conditions? Naturally, a good deal of common sense departs the room when we tackle emotional topics such as this, but it serves as a good example of how we only focus on one disaster at a time.
Who is reining in Putin right now? Who is handling the Greek money crisis? Are the forest fires out? What are the consequences? We know the fires in Saskatchewan are going to add more than a few million to the provincial debt load, but nobody seems to want to talk about that at this stage of the game.
And all this is unfolding while Canadians grapple with a never-ending federal campaign featuring the leaders of the four parties only. The new head count in the House of Commons will be 338, yet it seems only four faces are to be clearly recognized at the end of the day. The candidates, including cabinet ministers, apparently get marching orders from one source, their Leader’s offices. Autonomy on Parliament Hill is pretty well dead.
Now having outlined the shifts in news-making priorities over the past few months, we would simply like to make one clear observation.
It’s about the economy.
Whether it be China, Russia, the United States or the European Union. It’s still all about the economy because that’s how we tend to keep score, the one thing we all have in common.
And when economic conditions falter on a world-wide scale, we all suffer.
Whether Greece was fudging their numbers or China was lying about their construction and business growth or Russia was trying to flex their muscles while under economic sanctions, it all doesn’t really matter until the global master puppeteers gather the players into one grand ballroom and force them to leave the facades behind, face realities and get back to the business of doing business, preferably with one another.
No more phony mortgages and default swaps or major banks cheating governments and moving against the spirit of economic recovery by hoarding money and governments printing out stacks of new money without any domestic production as backing.
Naturally, we are not so weak minded as to think the world leaders need to pay attention to a small-time editorial in a community newspaper, we are simply saying that we can observe what is happening with the hope that at least some solutions are discovered before we all get mired in self-inflicted messes.
