Congratulations to the Dow

The world's stock markets shot up like a heroin addict. America's Dow Jones gained 11 pc. It was the biggest one-day rally since 1933. (Yes, since 1933.)

The stock markets are celebrating Europe's bailout plan. In Germany, for instance, the government set aside US$600 billion for the banking system. That's, um, more than a fifth of the country's annual GDP.

In America, we're going to channel some $250 billion directly into the banks, so as to nationalize them. The government is behaving like a blackout drunk who's forgotten that the bar tab isn't a function of infinity.

I shudder to think of the corruption involved in this. Of course, there will be no final accounting for these trillions of dollars, despite the vows of 'transparency and oversight.' It would take trillions of pages of reports to account for trillions of dollars. Our wealth - like our democracies and our ice caps - is disappearing before our eyes.

Bankers and bureaucrats will pocket millions as the money 'trickles down' through the system. They'll throw extravagant, end-of-the-world parties and shopping sprees. They'll buy Rolls-Royces, 7 year-old catamites, little girls and gold toilets. The West is more corrupt than it was in those famously debauched years before WWI, when politics became theater and 'les nuages de la guerre' gathered in the skies. Income inequality is at ballooning 1928 proportions.

But will the plan work? No, it won't.