I felt tired the other day. Then I was talking to a friend: "I'm so tired..." she said,"..and I was talking to a couple of friends and they were saying how tired they were. It must be something that's going around." Next day I was talking to the manager of a local restaurant. "The staff are all so lethargic this week. I can't think what's come over them. Everyone appears to be exhausted."

It seems that when there are the signs of a depression, it's not just economic, affecting retailing and export. It's emotional, personal and all-pervading. Nobody has anything to be cheerful about, so everyone goes into a state of general mourning.

Sorry, guys, I just don't buy the idea that we're in some sort of accidental depression because the banks over-stretched themselves. They've been sending out credit cards with a £1,000+ credit limit as an 18th birthday present to teenagers for the last decade. It was calculated; they created an ethic of universal affordability of anything; a concept of unrestricted materialism. I am darned sure they knew exactly what they were doing. Gradually more and more of the population were sucked into the culture of living on maxed-out plastic. The bubble had to burst, and what the banks hadn't counted on was that when they pushed their customers to the wall, they themselves might be following close behind.

What I still don't understand is how the governments of the world suddenly found tens of trillions of currency to "rescue" their economies when there is never any money for schools and hospitals and clinics and welfare. It's the same as when there's going to be a war; there's always blood-money. Trillions are a bit of a joke because nobody can actually agree on how big a trillion is. The world is divided into those who use the "short scale" and those who use the "long scale." The short scale has increments of one thousand-fold, so that a billion is one thousand million. The long scale has increments of a million-fold, so that a billion is one million million. In not one piece of journalism in the past weeks of numerical overload have I read which scale we are working to. Is one trillion 1,000,000,000,000 or is it ONE MILLION times greater and would be written as the mind-boggling sum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000?
And does it matter, anyway? Banks have never lent money that actually exists, they lend money that doesn't exist and pay for the gamble by charging interest. In the past decade they didn't cover their risk but were happy to do this because they would create an indebted society.

When I was at primary school the first record (a circular black vinyl thing that rotated at 78rpm) that I purchased was "Sixteen tons." These are the lyrics of the chorus

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go;
I owe my soul to the company store...

Nothing changes much, does it? Company stores acted as bankers for the miners, and - yup - they bought the souls of the company employees. The chorus repeats after each verse, and, you know what, that's just like history. We're just up for the next round of singing the chorus: "Another day older and deeper in debt."

Come to think of it, I feel really tired....

 

A long weekend in Massachussets visiting my grandchildren, and a visit to Emerald Square Mall in Attleboro on Friday morning. Where have all the shoppers gone? I'm used to bargains after Thanksgiving, but the holiday season sales are early this year. The discounts were massive, with ticket prices slashed and with further discounts for newspaper coupons and store-card account holders. So where was everyone at 10.30 on Friday morning? In recession, no doubt, Later, when we went to a children's party on Saturday afternoon, the Mall was once again almost deserted.

It's sobering, and it's scary for any business as the psychology of recession affects everyone. The catch is that I sincerely believe that it's the 80/20 rule: 80% of any recession or boom is in the mind and only 20% is real. This was highlighted in an article in Monitor on Psychology earlier this year, following research at the University of Hawaii. So the answer is simple: go on! Have a drink! Cheer up! You could reverse the trend with a bit more positive thinking. Meanwhile, I'll get back on my hobbyhorse about linguistic confusion.

OK - you think I'm nit-picking again, but it's that word "momentarily," in the phrase 'This Ticket Counter is momentarily not occupied' [- and let's overlook the fact that ticket counter isn't a proper noun or title so doesn't justify any capitalisation.] Momentarily in Oxford English means for a moment or an instant, 'the light flickered momentarily and then all was dark,' but in American usage it generally means either 'currently' - as in the sign on the unmanned ticket counter above, or 'in a little while' as in 'the waitress will be with you momentarily.'

I find Anglo-American language differences fascinating, especially when they become quirkily contradictory to an almost British extent. One favourite is the immigration form when I land at Logan airport, which demands that the date be entered DD/MM/YYYY while all the rest of America writes MM/DD/YYYY. Good on you USA! You can be as amusingly inconsistent as a British municipality - like my own in Royal Tunbridge Wells.

We now have new litter laws in town. Instant ticket fines of £75 (about US$120) if you drop a cigarette butt or scrap of paper. But this scene in the park the other Sunday morning proves the old adage that it's one thing to make a law and another to enforce it. So, what's the answer? Surely it's the same as the boom and recession problem. It's all in the mentality of the people, all of us. If we believe in our country I honestly think we can keep - at least - our internal economy buoyant. And if we take pride in our environment, we'll look after it. Mind you I've been "thinking thin" for years and it's not yet done anything to reduce my waistline!