Holding our breath

After the colossal US bailout, the proverbial excrement also hit the fan in Europe, predominantly in the UK where the high interest rates offered by the now-defunct Icelandic banks have left many Britons destitute and Gordon Brown very angry! As the newscasters blithely rattle off millions that were deposited here and billions placed there, making up trillions of Monopoly money everywhere, we are all utterly bewildered and, may I add, worried sick about what will happen to all of us if this cataclysm continues to crumble like a disintegrating volcano.

Last week, the Prime Minister assured us that Malta will not be directly affected. In other words it appears, so far, that is, that only 0.5 per cent of BOV holdings was and the rest of the Malta financial holdings, at least the public ones, are safe as houses. Yes, Prime Minister, directly affected Malta may not be but what about all those Maltese who have invested for years and years in the US and the UK markets? What about our main source of tourism, the UK market; what about them? Will their reduced capitals and dwindling incomes allow them to enjoy the Malta sun next year?

Since 1987, our quality of life has ameliorated radically. Going back to pre 1987 life is unthinkable for those of us who vaguely remember the unrelenting doom and unrelieved gloom of those days of tightening belts. While Europe was in the pink, Malta was very much out in the cold.

Those were the days when the Minister of Finance's piece de resistance was the announcement of a decrease of five mils in the price of tinned tuna! While the Mintoff and KMB government snatched and grabbed anything it could lay its hands on, the Maltese, always resourceful, managed to evade this and salt away that till the day when the PN were finally elected.

Now it looks as if all we have achieved over the last couple of decades is disappearing like a sandcastle in a storm.

Malta cannot remain unaffected by this crash. While a chocolatier in NY was quick to put Crash Crunch chocolate on the market, we are not in a position to react so spectacularly. However, Joseph Muscat scooted off to Libya without any headless female torsos as hand luggage, ostensibly missing meeting with the President and another at the House, not to mention his maiden speech, to meet some Libyan officials to discuss energy and illegal immigration. He did not, as far as I know, meet the elusive Colonel but parts of the "secret" agreement with Silvio Berlusconi were passed on to him. He must know something we don't. Curiouser and curiouser.

There is a budget in the offing. Tonio Fenech has two choices. Either to rewrite a politically-expedient fairy tale or come over clean about the situation.

We are in a state of acute crisis where the collapse brought about by a criminally-insane practice by the fat cats of the stock and reinsurance markets have wreaked total mayhem which, marvel of marvels, did not prevent one of them from crediting himself with a bonus of 300 million pounds or dollars, I forget which, before the landslide began!

The writing has been on the wall for a long time. The government comme d'habitude has been looking for honey in the wrong places, always targeting the sitting ducks, the middle classes while being diddled by the financial geniuses employed by the very rich and bamboozled by the supposed very poor who, while enjoying all sorts of subsidies, expertly play dodgems with supermarket trolleys that become larger and more capacious with each outlet that opens. I actually can fit in the last one and I am not exactly small!

Tax those empty properties and forget about those proposed energy bills that are going to cripple us big time.

I would not like to be in Mr Fenech's shoes for all the rice in India. Pulling off this budget must be like walking a tightrope over a crocodile-filled pool holding a burning umbrella for balance and wearing stiletto heels. For the first time in our history we have a crisis on our hands that will prove, sure as eggs are eggs, to be as dire as World War II. We had no inkling of self government way back then and depended on Winston Churchill and the Secretary for the Colonies to sort us out.

Maybe some of you still think that Brussels today is like Westminster then. Do not be fooled. Although joining the EU 10 years too late was a better-late-than-never event, the EU is not the Deus ex macchina that many people think it is. No more partisan cosmetics this time round Mr Fenech. Spare us the rhetoric and just tell us how we are all going to survive for the next 12 months.

kzt@onvol.net