Reefs, Not Rocks

The painting is called Heavy Weather, and is by William Swanson, who is very talented. His art online can be found here. As is usually the case with my own condition, I cannot tell if, in looking at the boat that is making it through, I am staring from the water, dry land, or one in a worse position.

It may be that, by sleight of hand and by postponing reckoning, financiers and central bankers--and political leaders--may have bought a little time. I am being very cautious in writing that, perhaps stupidly so, but I couldn't help noticing a few tentative signs this morning that the west's descent was now slowing.

By that, I mean that the immediate pressure of rising energy prices because of a full-tilt burning up of oil supplies ended with the onset of the recession. Between 2005 and 2007, oil price growth was locked in a cycle with rising food, energy, plastic, and chemical costs.

Despite the fact that known supplies were being exploited full tilt, this seemed very likely to lead to a peak oil depression, and I was worried about it at the time. Now--and at a very great human cost, given all the worry and stress about joblessness and credit payments and home repossessions there must be this morning--some time may have been bought.

Commentators within the oil industry, conscious that new oil supplies are only being found at depths and pressures and in forms that would make them unviable unless very high prices prevailed, are psychologically acclimatising themselves to the active limitation of prices within bands. In the longer term, EU leaders and major oil players like Turkey, the states of the Caucasus, and Central Asia, are maneuvering to extract as much late advantage as they can from this new sense of oil restraint, and even the EU is proceeding sensibly with a revamped Nabucco project.

At the same time, a framework of international and national behaviour is being put in place to attempt to manage future energy discovery. States and private companies are pressing ahead with nuclear research, and the climate change argument is beginning to be exposed, which is allowing the case for coal to develop again.

All of this is quite hopeful. The future will be bumpy, but even in the field of renewable energy, which can only ever be supplementary, things are looking up.

In economic terms, we seem to be flat. Unemployment will continue to rise across the west, and we may even combine that with inflation as unsupported monetary stimulus kicks in soon. Yet if we can make it through the summer and not see a European banking collapse, which I am sure frantic efforts are being made to avoid behind the scenes, and if swine 'flu doesn't mutate in the Autumn, we may surface beyond the rocks and with only the reefs to avoid.

I feel full of hope this morning. My mother is doing well, my brother and sister are holding their own, my own situation, which often sits behind these slightly crazy posts, has improved, and whilst there are plenty of people I am personally worried about, I can't see a personal reason why I should be collectivising panic. If one looks at the facts of the world reasonably, I think that there are grounds for optimisim there too. Then again, I generally feel like this in the mornings; as Colin Powell once said, there's nothing that doesn't seem a little better after a good night's sleep.

I really hope that things get better rather than worse. I'd even clutch at straws about endogenous economic growth inspired by technology and creativity if I felt that it could be justified. Human ingenuity and endurance being what they are, I think that, maybe, we could make it through. Thanks be to God!

On an almost completely unrelated note, here is a trailer for a Kurosawa film that's been rolling around my head and that has its moments of optimism--The Bad Sleep Well. It's touted as a version of Hamlet, but it has its own tragic charm, and I suppose the tenuous connection is the tale of how even the most tragic movies have moments of lightness...I love its jaunty signature tune, which heralds some of the worst moments. What can you expect if you are recovering from two decades of evil empire culminating in a couple of atom bombs?