By Alasdair Macleod
I have not faced the prospect of a new year with so much trepidation
as when I contemplate what is in store for 2013. Systemic risks abound,
which of themselves are not the main story, only milestones on the road
to final currency destruction, unless governments somehow regain their
senses.
To help understand the perils of 2013 I shall give them their
background context first before listing them individually. No such list
can be exhaustive or temporally sequenced, but all on it have the same
root: the long-term accumulation of a burden of unsupportable debt.
This is a story that started with the end of the First World War, and
involves a world which replaced laissez-faire with political motivation
in economic and monetary affairs, moving away from wealth-creation into
wealth-destruction in the cause of the common good.