The ancient Chinese curse ‘May you live in interesting times’ received a strenuous workout in 2020. According to Google’s instruments, use of the phrase spiked sharply in March, just as confirmed global cases of COVID-19 were passing the 100,000 mark and the Coalition Government was putting together its first stimulus package. Invocations of the curse were especially popular within the business community, already reeling from both supply and demand shocks, and facing the prospect of six months or more on economic life-support. Not that everyone within that community was hoping for a return to uninteresting times. Did I dream it, or was Jeff Bezos recorded at an orgy at his estate in Washington declaiming Mao’s alternative dictum, ‘Everything under heaven is in utter chaos! The situation is excellent!’? I think I dreamt it. [More here.]