Meltdown And Murphy

Newcastle Herald

Wednesday December 31, 2008

Joanne McCarthy

THERE'S a thing called the Potato Museum in America.

It had its start in Belgium but changed nationality some time between 1975 and now. I don't know why. I do know it would consider moving again, should some kind country care to take it on.

The Potato Museum's office is in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but the institution is "actively seeking a community that will provide it with a permanent home whether in North America or overseas".

The potato people do seem to have a chip on their shoulders.

Sorry. It was either that or something about being fried. Put it down to 2008 fatigue.

It might have escaped you in this 12 months of petrol price turmoils, global financial meltdowns, climate change horrors, terrorist strikes and political dramas, but we have been celebrating the International Year of the Potato.

The United Nations General Assembly had hoped to focus on the role the potato can play in providing food security and eradicating poverty. The Potato Museum expected huge crowds to see its fabulous collection of starchy tubers and things made of potatoes, including a vase that appears to have been fashioned from mashed potato and gaffer tape. Put that on your list of 1000 things to see before you die.

But really rich people like Bernard Madoff have grabbed the limelight in 2008 instead.

At the end of a year in which we thought we'd seen every shameless excess by the men who gave us the global financial crisis recall the begging bank heads in their private jets, the "exhausted" financiers blowing several hundred thousand dollars of government bailout funds on a weekend jaunt, the trillions for corporations while average folk lost their homes along came Madoff.

His broking firm was a $US50 billion fraud run under the noses of authorities for years. Decades even. But one of the pillars of the US financial community was just a fancy pyramid scheme.

"There is no innocent explanation," he said when arrested by the FBI.

There's just a shocking and rather depressing explanation, and one that's been heard too many times this year. The regulators didn't regulate.

And while the election of Barack Obama showed the world what the American dream could be about, the story of Madoff's grand sham is the American nightmare we've been dragged into.

But things could have been worse in 2008.

Sarah Palin could have been a heartbeat from setting up a moose farm in the White House rose garden.

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva could have simulated the Big Bang, or the Reverse Big Bang with Pike, or the Black Hole that could suck us into oblivion, or whatever it had the potential to do when it was switched on in October, but didn't.

Belinda Neal might have fulfilled her ambition to become prime minister, once she made sure everyone knew who she was.

Shane Warne might have made a comeback.

Gordon Ramsay might have moved to Australia.

It might have been your bowl of poo-flavoured ice cream.

Many good things happened in 2008. Kevin Rudd showed us the value of saying sorry, and then made history by appointing Quentin Bryce the first female Australian Governor-General. And the sky didn't cave in.

The Beijing Olympics did not implode or explode as we feared, and a young Australian diver nailed a double the highest score in Olympic diving history recorded by the first openly gay competitor.

The Pope came to Australia in July to celebrate youth, tried to heal old wounds along the way, and didn't give us our first saint.

And just when we thought we could forget about climate change because it's been such a cool, wet year, along came economist Professor Ross Garnaut in September delivering one of the toughest climate change warnings yet, which Mr Rudd all but ignored with the Federal Government's white paper a couple of months later.

But not to worry. In 2008 we found ice on Mars, where physicist Stephen Hawking thinks we should be heading once we've well and truly stuffed things up here.

So let's say farewell to the Year of the Potato. Share a pack of chips with a friend.

jmccarthy@theherald.com.au

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

Back to News Index | Back to Home