The Bird Flu is still advancing from the East.

Hurricane Wilma is coming up from the South.

The real threat, Jeremiah warned the Israelites and the minister of St. Michael's warned Londoners, is internal, not external.

But here...we give the devil his due. Events have a way of being linked together. One thing leads to another, and to another...where the chain leads, we cannot know. But sometimes it just seems to go bad.

King Edward III's daughter died of plague in the 14th century. She was not the only one. The disease carried off the king of Castile, the queen of Aragon, the son of the emperor of Byzantium, the queen of France, and the queen of Navarre. Neither purple nor velvet were proof against the malady.

The archbishop of Canterbury died. Then, his successor died, and then his successor's appointed successor died, too.

In some places, half the population was wiped out, with a third of the entire population from India to Iceland in their graves before the plague disappeared.

Where did the plague come from? It arrived with the great Mongol empire. In the battle for the Genoese port city of Kaffa (now Feodosia), the besieging Mongols had an idea; they would catapult the bodies of their own plague victims over the city walls. It took little time for the fleas on the infected bodies to jump to living bodies...and soon the town was sick. Those still healthy had had enough; they retreated in their galleys across the Black Sea back to their homeland, Genoa, and brought with them the cursed disease.

For many, death from the plague must have come as a blessed relief. Early in the 14th century, Europe suffered some of its worst weather, poorest harvests, and bloodiest uprisings in history. Violent storms hit the coasts and destroyed dikes. Cold, rainy summers ruined harvests. The price of food rose 500%. People ate cats, rats and even animal dung. When those delights ran out, they dug up the dead and ate them.

Those who did not starve to death or die of plague often died from violence. In 1303, the pope himself was captured by a mob. He died soon after under mysterious circumstances. The next pope was murdered. His successor removed the whole papal administration to France, to Avignon, where he thought he might be safe.

But there wasn't much safety to be found anywhere. Peasant uprisings, the Hundred Years war, the Jacqueries, Guelphs vs. Ghibellines, bands of brigands roamed the country. “What shall they say that readeth this or heareth it read,” asked the era's leading historian, Froissart, “but that it was the work of the Devil?”

The devil works in strange ways: he causeth people to believe what they must believe when they must believe it. Thus is U.S. Treasury Secretary junketing around the world telling the poor benighted Chinese that they should take advantage of Wall Street's “sophisticated” expertise? We don't know...but we think he may be lobbing dead bodies over the city walls, trying to infect our rivals with the disease that has so weakened the Anglo-American economies.

Of course, few people on Wall Street or the U.S. Treasury department would agree with us. They claim there is some magic to shuffling money. The sophisticated dealers role up their sleeves, split the deck, mixed up the cards, and whammo bammo...there are twice as many of them! Here in London, we see the evidence of this expertise everywhere. The City, London's equivalent of Wall Street, is the country's most profitable industry. On both sides of the Atlantic, the masters of the universe seem to be holding the best cards. Just walk into a fancy restaurant without a reservation, or try crossing the street without looking both ways, and you will find yourself without a meal...or without a leg. Small comfort will be that you have saved yourself $500 or been run down by a Porsche. All this money must come from somewhere. But where? Are they really offering the world a ‘new deal' based on sophisticated new knowledge that better allocates capital and increases everyone's wealth? Is it another milestone on the road to progress, democracy and prosperity?

Or is it another devilish old false shuffle - loading up the world with debt while skimming the best cards for themselves?

*** “The price of gold has really backed off this week, which is fine with me, as it gives the investors in our MarketSafe Gold CD a good entry point,” says our pal over at EverBank, Chuck Butler.

“Keeping its head above that $470 level has been difficult for gold, but from my view in the cheap seats, it looks like it's just biding its time, forming a strong base, before heading to $500.”

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing.  For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.