Friday 28 November 2008

People Before Things

“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.” - Ernest Hemingway

3 comments:

Shannon Fricke said...

Oh dear LP - that's so spot on it's frightening!
sx

columnist said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
columnist said...

The upside of this so-called credit crunch is that we all learn this tenet, and remember it well. The "holiday season" is so much more than gifts and materialism, but sadly we all seem to have lost sight of that. I hope Hemingway's first reference (inflation) doesn't happen, but with all the money that's being pumped into the financial system, it's very hard to see how that will not come to fruition. The second one, as we know, has had a terrible impact, the extent of which we probably do not yet know; and I'm not referring to the financial cost, which is mind-boggling, but the human cost. I hope we now have some intelligent minds thinking this through!