I told myself I should write something about the economic crisis, to clarify my bewildered head. There’s no shortage of detailed news from the front lines, but this feels like one of the rare cases where understanding the detail doesn’t lead to understanding the whole. Or maybe that’s just my lack of a finance background speaking.
Last week, for , I read through a series of Esprit articles on the subject, economists and intellectuals lining up to fit it into their schemas. Day by day, I read newspaper articles on the latest twists and turns, listen to the podcasts from NPR. Each level makes a sort of sense in its own terms (there’s much I’m sceptical about, but I’m too ignorant to join in the arguments at a higher level than parroting the last thing I read). But somehow, I can’t fit both the details and the big picture into my head at once.
Probably that’s good: in a few years, the party lines will have been retrospectively drawn up, we’ll all know who to label heroes and villains. For now, we’re all as baffled as each other.