From my distant vantage in Greece I am attempting to follow what has been described as the BrisConnections fiasco, in the course of which investors in the Brisbane Airport Link Tunnel lost a whole heap of money.
Now the Macquarie Group has offered a lifeline of sorts. But the spokesman for the Australian Shareholders' Association, Stuart Wilson, has said that the 'lifeline' might cover the bulk of investors, but 'not the bulk of desperate investors'.
Thing is: the meaning of the word 'desperate'.
Time was when I would weep at the drop of a hat. But I'm old now, and have inevitably toughened up. Get hard or get hurt, as the saying goes. It's not as simple as that, however, for most people wobble back and forth in the space between those two points.
And so I burst into tears recently while watching recent television news. In the United States, a man had shot his five children, and then himself. He probably had no investments beyond the most precious one of all, but was clearly in an extremity of desperation.
My immediate thought was that this truly dreadful happening was the result of a time of great trial. Poorer Americans, in particular, are suffering badly, with tent cities springing up everywhere across their great land.
Despair and economic Depression go together, and this sort of annihilation of family is by no means uncommon: there have been other cases already in the States, and history records many, many past instances.
My paternal grandfather, for example, was born in a township on the Murray River in 1893. Wool prices had declined, property values had fallen, banks were failing, business was at a standstill, and jobs could not be found.
Then, as now, Depression brought its hardest suffering and misery to those least able to bear it. Not far away from my grandfather's township, and not long after he was born into comfort and prosperity, a farmer killed his three children before turning the gun on himself.
Decades ago, when I was a blithe young spirit, I had as a colleague another blithe young spirit. A privileged lad, he was also complacent. He soon left the world of teaching and went on to succeed spectacularly in the world of business. The poor, he was fond of proclaiming, are so because they don't work hard enough.
Even at the age of 21, going on about 14, I felt