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On radio, TV and in print all sorts of pundits seem to have gone a bit ditzy over Alistair Darling's emergency budget in the past 24 hours. Magnificent Max Hastings, who knows a lot about warfare, calls it a "fiscal atom bomb" in today's Mail.
Mayor Boris Johnson, the Max Hastings of the boudoir, accuses Gordon Brown of behaving like a drunk at a gambling table. Crikey, Boris!
But otherwise serious people, who claim to know more about economics, are saying the financial catastrophe is even greater than two world wars, without so much as a nod towards our ruined cities and factories in 1945 or the mountains of dead, wounded and traumatised in 1918.
Nonsense. It's pretty bad, but no one is dying. Net public borrowing as a percentage of GDP was far higher after the second world war – is 250% correct? – and we gradually paid it off in far worse circumstances. That is why food rationing – worse than in the war itself - lasted until 1953.
After the first world war (when the Yanks cleaned us out and stiffed us again), we also paid plenty back, but still owed them around £40bn until recently – while other allies owe us twice as much. They ain't going to pay. Pity we forced the Germans to keep paying reparations in the 20s. We all know what happened next.
I mention this to try and raise morale, a useful exercise in trying times. The BBC archive carries a very amusing warning against taking financial hyperbole too seriously. Life usually goes on and it will be global warming or a rampantly nationalist China which switches the lights off, not Chancellor Darling's PBR.
Meanwhile, the FTSE seems to have weakened a bit this morning – after irrationally shooting up above 4,000 again yesterday – as Treasury gilts recovered from their shock and the Bank of England's Mervyn King backed Darling's package.
In times like this we don't look to markets for leadership any more than we expect bankers to storm the Normandy beaches in search of their bonuses.
I also seem to be out of step, always a good place to be, in refusing to see
