What’s fun about the crisis is watching the experts scramble to explain things they obviously don’t understand. The same experts who didn’t see this coming are now spouting off about how long it will last. It’s funny also to see blind faith in the voodoo power of magic words make a comeback. Tusk announced yesterday that if the zloty sinks in value to 20 euro cents Poland will defend it. But it’s not “intervention” and please don’t use that word, he says. After all, the government is not about intervention. Another funny one, which unfortunately I can’t find on the internet editions of Gazeta Wyborcza, was the opinion expressed by some experts that actually intervening in the currency markets would be a bad idea but talking about intervening – that would be fine, just what the zloty needs.

The government is interv– errr, defending the zloty by cashing in all the euros it has from the EU on the money markets rather than in the central bank (if this sounds like gibberish to you perhaps you should consider a career in economics). A good idea, surely? Those euros are worth a lot of zloties these days. But basically this is currency speculation and speculation, we are being told, is the problem causing the zloty’s weakness. It’s good when we do it but bad when others do it.

More entertainment: a mini-Madoff has been found.