Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader laughed aloud today when he heard an update from the ongoing G20 summit. Later he laughed again when he read this off the AP news wire:
[British PM Gordon] Brown initially trumpeted the gathering as “a new Bretton Woods  a new financial architecture for the years ahead.” But the meeting so far bears little similarity to the 1944 New Hampshire conference where the eventual winners of World War II gathered to set postwar global monetary and financial order.Washington has eased off on its push for other governments to pump more money into economic stimulus programs after heavy opposition from European countries, who contend their bigger social safety nets make more spending unnecessary.
Germany and France have instead campaigned for tougher rules to restrain financial market excesses.
That disagreement has lowered expectations for the London summit and weakened confidence in the world’s ability to quickly pull out of the downturn.
The boldface emphasis is that of your Maximum Leader and not the AP.
Gordon Brown was going around touting the G20 summit as a new Bretton Woods and now lowering expectations…
It caused your Maximum Leader to recall a portion of a comedy routine by Eddie Izzard in his “Dress to Kill” show. Izzard recounts an exchange between himself and his career counsellor in school. It goes like this:
Izzard: “I want to be an astronaut, discover new things.”
He (the counsellor) said, “Look, you’re British, so scale it down a bit.”
“All right, I want to work in a shoe shop, then. Discover shoes that no one’s ever discovered in the back of the shop.”
He said: “Look, you’re British, so scale it down a bit.”
“All right, I want to work in a sewer, then. And discover sewage no one’s ever discovered and pile it on my head and sell myself to an art gallery.”
Lowering expectations for the G20 summit caused your Maximum Leader to picture Gordon Brown going into a sewer, piling newly discovered sewage on his head and trying to sell himself to the Tate Modern.
Carry on.
