Monday, May 5
The misery on the streets, the despair in the bus queues, the wan faces on our kiddies … all conspired to suggest the Phantom Day Traders had returned to a country on the threshold of profound economic malaise. Nepal, by comparison, looked positively buoyant; at least they smiled at us.
The grim visage of the Lucky Country in 2008 brought back memories of the dreaded economic crisis of August 2006, when banana inflation reached its height.
Many are the nights I lay in bed, sweating through the wee hours, rising occasionally to retch into a slop bucket, dreading the return of those wretched days, as my old fan went thwump, thwump, thwump on its loosening carriage, likely at any moment to spin off and decapitate my left foot. Or perhaps my right.
It was Cyclone Larry, I think, that wiped out Australia's entire banana reserves. To think, our beloved country effectively banana-less! A banana-less non-republic …
Those lessons are worth relearning as today's food prices soar and the horrific Cyclone Nargis levels Burma.
In August 2006, according to an Emergency World Food Program inquiry, 3 million Australian kiddies went banana-less for months. A single cluster of bananas survived Larry's devastation. But such was the rampant banana inflation that speculators valued that cluster at around $11,009,667.11. They were yellow bananas, I think.
"The gap between the rich and the poor in Australia has deepened," reported the UN agency. "Australia is now a nation of haves and have-nots, of those who can afford their daily potassium allowance and those who cannot."
Tuesday, May 6
I continued applying myself to the great Australian banana crisis in an attempt to divine further truths about today's mess. The crisis apparently deepened when Robert Fisk flew in to report on the banana drought. When Fisky darkens your door, you can bet you're in deep doo-doo. Indeed, I'm told that things can even get worse at the very mention of his arrival.
"Fruit bowls across Australia," Fisky wrote, "were empty this morning as Australians queued outside their local kitchens for the daily banana allowance. Only this morning I filmed myself gravely feeding a rotten banana to an emaciated Australian kiddie." That report so disturbed me that I did a tour of the country. And what I saw added to my deep unease: desolate beaches and farms and paddocks and not a single banana in sight.
Near Boggabri I came upon a dozen blue helmets protecting a lone dwarf banana from a bunch of salivating bandits; nearby stood a little starving Australian kid, his stomach distended with malnutrition, his little hand outstretched, pleading for a smoothie, or a fritter, or even the little bits on the end of the banana that no one eats.
Luckily Sir Bob Geldof was on hand with blankets. Thank God for Sir Bob.
But blankets don't a banquet make, so I flicked the kiddie my last cashew, which he gobbled up like an Eritrean chihuauha.
Wednesday, May 7
Today the world seems very much on the edge of a similar crisis. Butter has deserted Japanese supermarket shelves.
"I'd desert them too, if I were Japanese butter: have you seen Japanese supermarket shelves?" The speaker was Yogi, our senior chartist, at our weekly investment summit. These investment summits are not a patch on Kevin Rude's 2020 Summit, but we do try.
Anyway, it transpired during the meeting that the Third World is starving.
"They can't afford bread," declared Doomsday, our bear market analyst. "In Pakistan yesterday, hundreds of breadless locals got into a fist fight. All over Africa the seething masses have resorted to eating yams. And I dare not even mention Burma."
Thursday, May 8
A hand went up. It was Byron Dawn, our leisure industries analyst.
"May I inquire why we're all so concerned? We're day traders, not global carers. I'd like to know: are there any investment opportunities in rising food prices? To be blunt, can we exploit this misery somehow?" It was an interesting question, and one that is vexing the minds of the world's finest super fund managers, and unusual for Byron, who usually dwells on his New Age fantasies.
We went into a huddle, as usual, and found an answer: "We should buy abalone futures!" announced FastCash, our head of research. "And perhaps white rhino tusks. Aphrodisiacs are in huge demand during a depression!"
Friday May 9
We're all in bed recovering from last night's hysterical outburst from Emeritus Professor Valerie Carr-Edwards, our ethical investment adviser. She disapproved of FastCash's rhino tusk tip and went on a rampage. Oh well, back to short-selling bananas.
