Now, I know something about putting feet wrong, and I can tell them for free: Taking a defensive position is the worst look you can wear, and even more so if you really are on the hook, like most of these crooks, whether it’s Apple or Nathaniel Rothschild and Vallar, his shell company, which can magically list on the London Stock Exchange before the company even exists”€”and by the way, is the London Stock Exchange, therefore, up for sale? Or was it simply unduly influenced by the famous charm of this aforementioned business genius? Anyhow. You can like Rothschild’s naked cunning, even if what it says about the world scares you just as much. And I’m not one to trash any man’s business strategy; God knows how many bad strategies I’ve had to climb out of, and I’m still climbing.

Yet this is the world we live in. And remind me, please, to privatize an entire island nation in the Burmese archipelago before the next guy does it. Because, and now let’s face the firing squad as bravely as Colonel Buendia faced it: Because this is what is coming down the line. And not a moment too soon, since the governments don’t seem able to turn an iPad the right way up, let alone manage a country. So let’s ring-fence this shit: Garrison up, fortress the golf-course developments, install private airports with paid-for security next to the world’s most important marinas, and forget all about Braveheart and fighting for “your country.”

At least that’s what I wished I could have done when the A/C gave out in my squalid room in Viejo, followed shortly by the TV set and that wonderful CNN anchorwoman with the long straight black hair who looks like a dominatrix. (What woman on TV doesn’t these days? It almost makes a man wish upon innocence.)

To conclude: I think it’s time to exonerate Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the court of public opinion and let his brain takes us back out of this mess in Europe and its neighbors. And if the man (DSK) needs some “merchandise,” let me tell you: There is plenty of merchandise in Puerto Viejo, there is many a lady who’d be only too happy to party with him and his high-strung economist pals.

If that’s what it takes to get the job done. It’s what they once, quaintly”€”in the Age of Optimism I earlier referred to, pre-2008, I believe it was”€”what they once called a “win-win situation.”

Let’s hope, in these zero-sum days, that we never need return to Puerto Viejo. And if this message to you ever sees the light of day, let the message go wide, and let it say”€”to the people of North Korea”€”before we, the G19, take down Kim Wrong-un and liberate their asses; once we have dealt with the Japanese question”€”let us then tell every man, woman, and child in Pyongyang: “Feel good, at least, that you don’t live in Puerto Viejo….”

Let’s, no?

Yours, as ever,

“€”Bombay