*** Uh oh, what’s this:

“ Argentina may face worst unrest since the ‘70s,” says a headline in the TIMES of London.

Hmmm…we’re on our way to Argentina on Friday…to see our new grandson. The last thing we want is trouble.

But apparently, “a farmers strike has emptied the shelves of meat, cereals and milk.” More than 400 roads are blocked. Much of the discontent followed a disastrous speech by the president of the country, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, which is said to have alienated the farmers even further.

At the heart of the matter is a new tax – up to 49% - on soy exports. Argentina is a farming nation. And soy prices are so high, the farmers planted every available acre, hoping to score big on international grain markets. And now the government has stepped in to take half their money; no wonder they have their bombachos in a twist.

This just goes to illustrate our point: no situation is ever so beneficent that politicians won’t find a way to make a hash of it. The oil exporters are getting a once-in-a-lifetime windfall from high energy prices. What are they doing? Building empty skyscrapers and adding social welfare promises faster than the pumps can put out oil. They’ve managed to squander most of their profit margins and then some. Just look at Hugo Chavez. He had so much oil he was able to throw his weight around all over Latin America. But the dumbbell has so mismanaged his own economy that the place is said to be falling apart.

And look to at the US of A. What a bonanza it was to have the world’s biggest military…its richest economy…and its only reserve currency. The rest of the world seemed to want to give Americans valuable goods and services, expecting nothing in return but pieces of green paper. It was like manna falling from heaven. How did Americans manage to turn that into the biggest financial trap in history – actually growing poorer during the greatest boom the world had ever seen?

And now Argentina…with the world’s richest farmland…the world’s flattest, best watered fields, and some of its best weather…has found a way to turn the highest grain prices in history into a financial crisis.

Bravo! Bravo to us all

*** One of the world’s most fascinating people is surely the first lady of France, Carla Bruni. She dined with Queen Elizabeth II last week. Amid all the glamorous guests, glitzy table setting and diamonds, it was she who sparkled most.

What follows has no apparent connection to our beat – money. Nor does it have any particular connection with anything. Still, women represent half the human population. As poets, we are fascinated by them. As philosophers we are intrigued. And as economists, we cannot ignore them. Mr. Sarkozy’s wife is a woman, but not just any woman; she seems to us to be a kind of uberfemale. Almost unnaturally gifted, talented, beautiful and corrupt.

The trouble with economics – one of them – is that economists are almost all male. And thus they are completely incapable of understanding the motives or methods of half the population they are meant to be studying. That is why we turn our attention to Carla. She is such an extreme example of womanhood, perhaps we can learn something.

For readers who have not followed the French press, Ms. Bruni is an extraordinary subject. The French say she is a “croqueuse d’hommes” – which is to say, a man eater. It was she, according to the press, who had such an affair with Mick Jagger that it destroyed his long marriage to that tough, smart and talented Texan, Jerry Hall. And it was she, too, who is said to have had affairs with Eric Clapton and Donald Trump. Then, she lived with a French philosopher, Jean-Paul Enthoven, until she took a fancy to his son, Raphael, with whom she had a son, Aurelien. Nor was she particularly demure about the whole thing; she wrote a song called “Raphael” describing how she had fallen madly in love and had great sex with him.

She is so “properly, old-fashionedly beautiful,” writes India Knight in the TIMES of London, “with non-inbred aristocratic features and good bones; so beautiful that she makes everyone else look like pudding.”

Not only that, she speaks three or four languages…comes from a fabulously rich family…and can sing. At the Queen’s state dinner, practically every one of the hundreds of guests had seen her naked photo in the tabloids the day before. Yet, she was reportedly the most composed, most confident person there.

According to reports, she is irresistible at every level – intellectually, emotionally, sexually and artistically. What’s more she lives around the corner from your editor’s Paris apartment.

“I saw her go by last night,” said a neighbour on Saturday. “She had a whole squad of police with her.”

“Why doesn’t she move into the Elysee Palace with her husband,” we wanted to know?

“Apparently, she likes to keep her independence.”

Madame Sarkozy is like no first lady France has ever seen. Nor is she like any first lady any country has ever seen. She says she finds monogamy “boring.” She further observed that “love lasts a long time, but burning desire – two to three weeks.” Here is the world’s most desirable woman – married to a cad. But she is the perfect political prop…a woman who plays her role superbly – according to the local gossip, both in public and in private – and who otherwise goes on her way and amuses herself.

What do other women think of her? Around the corner, from what we hear, they barely let their husbands out of sight.

Your editor is an old-fashioned fuddy duddy; he admits it. He turns his tired eyes to politics, economics and finance – and sees only frauds and mountebanks. But when he comes home at night, he is charmed. In the newspapers, he regards the chatter on the editorial pages as all lies and claptrap; but at home he believes every fairy tale. When his broker proposes a hedge fund with a leveraged portfolio of private equity deals, he practically laughs in his face. But when his priest promises him everlasting life, what reason has he to doubt? And when his daughter says, “Oh Daddy…I just dropped by the office to say hello,” he’s delighted, scarcely noticing that she leaves with $50 to buy a new pair of blue-jeans.

There is a place for cynicism, he says to himself, and a place to believe. Poor Carla doesn’t seem to know the difference.

Still, she lives so close by. Better to keep an open mind. Besides, says your editor remembers that he has a couple weeks of vacation coming up…

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