Hard not to write about the financial crisis this morning. Especially as the Atlantic has increased the gloom by dropping its blanket on us here in southern Galicia.

For one reason and another, I’m late finishing off the reading of the July issue of Prospect magazine. So it was fascinating to read this intro to an article entitled “How to stop the next bubble”:-The financial crisis has shown that the markets are bubble-prone and that laissez-faire regulation doesn’t work. The authorities need to get a grip if we are to avoid a mega-bubble. But we may need an even deeper crisis for that to happen. Well, three months further on, we’ve possibly achieved this pre-condition. But can one say that the authorities – in Europe at least – have managed to get a grip? Not yet, I suspect. And if the top four of the EU partners can’t agree concerted action, what chance all twenty seven of them? Can this be the first hard evidence to substantiate my long-held belief that the EU dream will collapse under the weight of its own internal inconsistencies? And of the Anglo claim that one size certainly doesn’t fit all? Ya veremos.

Even more fascinating was an article by Julian Gough in which he charactersised what he calls “Incredible Hulk financial capitalism” as a global religion. You may be able to read the whole thing at www.prospect-magazine.co.uk but here are a few tasters:-

Critics such as Naomi Klein are almost exactly wrong when they say that the giddy boom and bust cycles of modern capitalism are forced on unwilling people by big corporations. On the contrary, we the people impose these rhythms on capitalism. We’ve always wanted higher highs and lower lows. That’s why we drink and take drugs. A flat life is no life; that’s why they kill themselves in Scandinavia. Boom and bust; party and hangover; they are human nature, as natural as the seasons or the clap. Modern capitalism just magnifies our urge to binge and purge - on food, on housing, on commodities, on life.

Often we are disgusted by what we discover what we want – but that reflects on us, not on the servant who brings us our fetish gear and saturated fats. It would bring us organic turnips just as happily.

As with all religious expansions, success bred hubristic dementia. The elevation of metaphysical above physical turned into a sort of contempt for the physical. Not even bankers know what a collateralised debt obligation cubed is.

Many talk about the inequalities of modern capitalism. But the truth is more subtle, and strange. Christianity once preached the equality of man but could find no way to make the vision real. Communism tried, and failed, to force equality upon us. But only our modern, excitable, faith-based capitalism has delivered this degree of uniformity and equality. IKEA, with its €6 chairs, is delivering not only the Christian but the communist heaven; everyone equal, sitting on the same chair, illuminated by the same lamp, all over the world.

Living, as I do, in a country where fun is possibly fetished more than in any other in the world and where the last 15 years have seen amazing stupidity in the avaricious and often corrupt pursuit of ever-more profit from a phony but government and bank-supported credit and construction boom, I find it almost funny to hear the regular comment that it’s all the fault of those unethical American capitalists. How’s that for taking no responsibility for your own actions? However human Julian Gough would say these were.

Finally, if you’re both left-of-centre and Europeanist and want to be annoyed by a pungent contrast between what’s happening right now in the USA and Europe, click here. Right-of-centre thinkers – and even some leftish democrats – might well enjoy it. Or at least recognise its validity.

PS. Talking of fun . . . If you’re in Galicia, you might want to drive to O Grove and attend the Seafood Festival there, which goes on until the 12th. You have the local mayor’s word for it that this is the best gastronomic event in all of Spain. And who wouldn’t believe a Spanish mayor?