Witold Gadomski of Gazeta Wyborcza is beginning to sound desperate. Today’s front page story in his newspaper is that the crisis is at hand. Ukraine and Hungary are in serious trouble and for foreign investors there is really no difference between all those East – sorry – Central European statelets. They’ll pull their money out of the whole region en masse, even if, say, Poland is actually in good shape. Already the zloty lost 18 groszy to the euro. But Gadomski on page two is of good cheer. A recession is not pleasant but it’s no catastrophe, he tells us. On condition that the economy quickly hits rock bottom and then bounces back. What is it that economists of a sardonic bent say, again? Oh, yes: even dead cats bounce. But for me the real gem of his piece is the following statement: “Almost everywhere in the world banks have stopped trusting their customers…” Bad customers! Bad customers! You may have thought customers had stopped trusting banks but you didn’t win a prize for defending market economics, did you, thicko?

Okay, so the US is not Poland but still I find the Onion more reassuring than Gadomski.