If I have to hear one more word about stimulus packages and bailouts, I'm going to scream. I have kept my counsel until now, watching politicians around the world flailing about, but can remain silent no longer.

This is how I see it: the stimulus Bill proposed by the President is a catastrophe. The Republican opposition to the Bill is a catastrophe. The House Bill is a catastrophe. The Senate Bill is a catastrophe. Caps on bankers' salaries are a catastrophe. Low interest rates are a catastrophe. Gordon Brown's bailout of the UK banks at 12 percent interest is a catastrophe. Gordon Brown is a catastrophe. Nicolas Sarkozy is a catastrophe. Iceland is a catastrophe.

Nothing any of these clowns are trying to do is making anything better. All of it is making things worse. The US journalist who spoke last week at the Bermuda International Business Association luncheon said, in essence, that governments are clueless, and are throwing everything they have against the wall to see what sticks. He's right. And that's a catastrophe.

Cutting interest rates to zero is not only a catastrophe, but also a cynical crime. It says to all those people who have done the right thing all their lives:

"Hey! You have money. We, the profligate, the cheaters, the Madoffs, the bad bankers, the incompetent politicians covered in pork, all those who didn't do our jobs - we'll take your hard-earned savings, thank you very much, and tough luck on you.

"We hate you for being more disciplined than we are, for having integrity, for thinking ahead, and so we're going to kick you into the street and dance on your pain."

Screaming about bad bankers is another catastrophe, a deliberately misleading technique for diverting blame from all the guilty parties to one guilty party. Yes, the bankers who made the worst of the bad loans are guilty. So are the people who borrowed money they knew they'd never be able to pay back. So are the regulators, who were supposed to keep a lid on things. So are the rating agencies who valued worthless mortgages and AIG at AAA. So are auditors who argue that their job is not to protect anyone but themselves. Most guilty of all are the governments that were supposed to protect us from all this (I exempt in this regard the Bermuda Government). Lord knows, we ask little enough of government most of the time. House the poor, help those who cannot help themselves, pave the roads, keep the peace - and in the process take half our incomes. We'll go along with that, providing you hold an umbrella over our heads when it rains.

Well, it's raining, and governments are using the umbrellas to beat us over the head instead. And now the most catastrophic fact of all, the one that should, rightly, make you run screaming into the distance. Only one person in the entire world appears to have any answers to all this, and it's me. Now you know we're in trouble. Give me a few paragraphs and I'll run screaming into the distance with you.

First, accept the unavoidable. A recession is taking place. That means some people will lose their jobs, others will lose their homes. It can't be avoided. It can't really be foreshortened. Like a hurricane, it's going to move in, do damage, and then move on.

Government's only job should be to help the people who need help. It shouldn't be spending billions helping industries that could use a hand if you've got one to spare, propping up inefficient car manufacturers, or any of the junk that's in the present US stimulus package.

So: give money directly to those who lives are in jeopardy. House those without a roof. Increase the take-home pay of those in work. Raise the tax on the rich. Move interest rates back towards five percent, restoring the faith of those who act correctly, and older citizens. Get out of the way and let time do the rest of the work.

None of that is going to happen, of course. Half of it is an offence to Democrats, one of the two most idiotic groups of hidebound fools in the world. The other half is an offence to Republicans, the other most idiotic group. These "my way or the highway" people are agreed, suddenly, that the only way to deal with a crisis is to steal from their children and their children's children. That is wrong. Plain wrong. Dead wrong. Criminally wrong.

Finally, for Heaven's sake, stop talking about how awful this is. Right now, our shaken confidence is the biggest problem. We're talking ourselves into a situation much worse than it need be. We're in danger of scaring ourselves right into an early grave.

We need to get over it, grow up, and face the future with confidence. That's hard to do when the global leadership's best bet is to break open the kiddies' piggy banks and throw the contents against a wall.

Good grief, Charlie Brown.