When Very Important People do Very Dumb Things, bad stuff spreads like an explosion in a catastrophe factory, depending on how important and how dumb they are.
Who could have foreseen, when Donald Trump won the American election in November 2024, that he would cost the earth this much? That his rule of disorder would lap against our island-off-an-island at the bottom of the world, upending supply chains, cancelling ferries and increasing the price of potatoes?
The business commentariat does not want us to worry. On 5 April, the New Zealand Herald’s business editor at large Liam Dann reassured us that “the markets will get bored with the war”, as if investors don’t need to catch airplanes, buy medication or eat.
If only we could separate ‘the markets’ from, you know, the actual markets.
If ‘the markets’ seems as remote as a fleet of alien spaceships, crises like the one unfolding now underline how dangerous that lack of clarity is. As Trump exposes the chaos of his own policies, he is also reminding us of the fragility of the global food system, which is, it turns out, a subset of the financial markets.
Without new ships or rationing, New Zealand’s diesel stocks are set to run out on 22 May. As Waiheke is not yet stocked by electric ferries, our community needs to know what the plan is in a severe fuel shortage. What will restrictions look like? How will critical diesel be apportioned? Who will be first in line? And where do we come?
I’m reminded of the early days of the pandemic, when medical researchers, fortunately for the rest of us, understood the gravity of the situation earlier than most politicians (our government excepted). A significant proportion stopped what they were working on to study the new virus, because they were frightened too – their children were sent home from school and their parents quarantined, just like everybody else’s.
“For Western scientists”, wrote Ed Yong in 2020, “it wasn’t a faraway threat. It threatened to inflame their lungs. It shut down their labs”.
In a survey of 2500 researchers in the US, Canada and Europe, a Harvard team found that 32 percent shifted their focus toward the pandemic. Throughout the world, scientists worked long hours while juggling other responsibilities. Their efforts led to the rapid breakthroughs which saved so many lives – reliable tests, breakthrough treatments, epidemiology and vaccines.
Despite achievements like this, science has been punished by the Trump regime. If Trump has his way, the operating budgets of the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency would be further cut by more than 50 percent in 2027 – to pay for a huge increase in military spending.
So talk of ‘the market’ or ‘science’ is useful shorthand only as long as we don’t mistake them for floating monoliths like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Catastrophes like Liz Truss, war, climate change-induced weather shocks and pandemics can indeed upend ‘science’ and ‘the markets’, as Covid-19 demonstrated.
International finance is extremely complex and obscure, differs from country to country and is protected by a shell of jargon – ‘equity, tranching, diversification, reserve ratios’. It’s like the Richard Feynman quote about quantum mechanics: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics”. (This is only funny if you know that Richard Feynman won a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum mechanics).
“In my opinion,” writes the economist Dr Cahal Moran, “anyone who tells you they fully understand the financial system is either mistaken or trying to sell you something.
“Politics, the law and society interact with the economy in a multitude of ways, and making these ways explicit is the first step in changing them for the better.”
In his book ‘Why We’re Getting Poorer: A Realist’s Guide to the Economy and How We Can Fix it’ Moran explores ‘community wealth building’. These include cooperatives, communal approaches to land, housing and ways of managing essential services as if they are, actually, essential.
The time has come to explore ideas like these.
Thinking about the American bull in the world’s china shop, I tried to think of another single human who has (arguably) inadvertently wrecked as many lives.
Poor old Thomas Midgely Jr had, according to the writer Bill Bryson, “an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny”. He invented two of the most environmentally destructive compounds in history: leaded gasoline and dichlorodifluoromethane, a potent CFC.
Midgely, having unwittingly contributed more than any other living person to the ‘greenhouses gas’ effect and the destruction of the ozone layer, died entangled in another of his inventions – an adjustable bed, which strangled him to death.
It’s true. Look him up.
• Jenny Nicholls
© Waiheke Gulf News Ltd 2025
