Everywhere, from corporate board rooms to public toilets, the people held their breath as world leader after world leader sullied forth to offer their sage wisdom and proposals on what to do about the great crisis of our age (you know, the one that nobody saw coming except about 5 billion people worldwide who don't read the Western "media").
But then, to the menacing tones of timpani drums, in strode Lord Gordon, triumphally announcing his Imperial plan to save the world (well, what we really mean is, the world according to the City of London).
As we all know, no great plan comes without an evil genius, and who better than our old nemesis, Sir Alan Greenspan? And there in the background, behind a pair of glasses just about thick enough to obscure even the very large red ink telephone book numbers on the disintegrating balance sheet of the world economy, he sits, grinning and salivating in great anticipation. Well I suppose if you had spent the last twenty or so years of your adult life building a gigantic superweapon capable of destroying entire worlds, you would probably want to have a little bit of a play, wouldn't you? After all, it is (in)human nature, isn't it?
I, for one, am mightily comforted that the people who have spent the most time merrily building this evil monstrosity of a financial system are now busy bashing away randomly on the controls to try and learn how to fly it. Soon enough, they will figure out how the targeting system works (does anyone seriously believe that they haven't already?) and then entire nations and cultures will be vapourised in a red mist of digital economic warfare.
After all, in the warped minds of those who created them, isn't it perfectly reasonable to expect that a bunch of digits on a computer screen are more important than human life? Pretty soon, if we do not find a way to destroy this super weapon that has been unleashed on mankind, we will find out the hard way.
Oppenheimer eat your heart out, these guys really know how to party!