24/04/2012
It is quite fun to watch Holland "do a Belgium" and get rid of its government. Add an "e" - that takes you to France and bogie-man Francois Hollande, the combination of which is enough to bring back fear to the eurozone, at least according to
The Independent.
However, the "fear returns" meme is being rather over-used -
The Guardian had it on 23 March, so it is a bit early for a re-run.
But then you just have to glance at some of the other headline on the on-line edition of the
Inde and you quickly happen upon
this, which is an absolute classic: "Danger from the deep: New climate threat as methane rises from cracks in Arctic ice".
This is stuff straight out of the horror movies, reinforced by the "appeal to authority" as the strap line tells you: "Scientists shocked to find greenhouse gas 70 times more potent than CO2 bubbling from deep ocean". Well, well, "scientists shocked", eh? Things must be bad.
Of course, what the newspaper is doing is exploiting the deep-set pattern of behaviour which seems inherent in human beings. Hobbes had it all those centuries ago (above), and you can always count on making a buck out of scaring your fellow man.
A skilled exponent of the scare has been James Lovelock, but he is canny enough to see which way the wind is blowing, and is
now admitting to having been "alarmist" about climate change.
Having it both ways, of course, is the
Daily Wail, which publishes that story, as indeed it ran with the "shock horror"
in 2009 (below), doing exactly the same as Lovelock. You get them on the way up and you get them on the way down. Either way, the punters pay.
The only thing is that the
Inde isn't as astute as the
Wail, which is why the latter still sells in the millions and the
Inde isn't even a rounding error in circulation terms.
Trading in fear is all very well, but you have to pick the right scare and match the cycle - "climate" is on the way down. Euro-fears are a runner, except that people are a bit jaded after Greece, so it is going to be a while before that is cranked up and really gets going.
Zerohedge is
doing its best, but it's slogging a dead horse at the moment. Its time will come, but not just yet. Look at this: "Billions wiped off Europe's biggest companies as political rebellion rocks eurozone", says the
Failygraph, and it doesn't even get the front page.
That's not to say that Mencken didn't get it right when he told us: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
But here, as in life generally, timing is everything. The
Wail is running the "
Marathon death girl" as its lead. That's where we're at. Scare stocks are down today.
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