As we head towards a speculative financial collapse, have you noticed those putting their hands up for political leadership, anywhere, are wackier and wackier?

The reason for this is that everybody has come to believe that the primary thing that governments must not do is anything that might reduce real estate speculation.

The last thing people in impossible levels of private debt want to see is their ‘asset’ price decline. Nor, of course, does banking, real estate and the media. On this particular pons asinorum, the population has the ear of governments of all persuasions.

So, politicians consider their number one job is to hold back the tide by not discussing or even mentioning private debt. It would not only offend those who have a mortgage and those who don’t, but also banks, the real estate industry and a media beholden to its “buy now” advertisers.

In this speculative atmosphere, the role of those people who look after us, make things, or are otherwise productive, is devalued as real wages continue to decline.

Politicians may speak ad finitum about government debt, which in the case of countries having their own currency isn’t debt at all, and, as the vast majority politicians are themselves heavily invested in real estate, they find common cause with the vast majority of people on this issue.

In these circumstances, land price-inflated debt must have its destructive way with us. It always has. That should be about 2027 if the 18-year real estate cycle holds. As a result of not being able to do the only thing that will reduce ‘house’ prices, namely tax land values more and earned incomes less, the financial turn of the tide is as inevitable as that demonstrated by Canute.

So, in the political milieu of political sins of omission, financial deceit and lack of direction, the most outlandish of political ‘leaders’ are able to get up and win public support.

Unfortunately, it’s a sign of the times.