The 'upside-down world': when shamelessness trades like an asset

The 'upside-down world': when shamelessness trades like an asset

"Judgment, dignity and truth are persecuted; lies and theft are rewarded as value." The line appears in no ECB report, but it sums up a mood spreading through unofficial economic commentary. The dystopia is accelerating, its prophets say, and something hard is coming. Not a single figure backs this up, yet the conviction keeps gaining trinc.

The perception that the world has turned upside down is nothing new, but the current situation has given it fertile ground. Those who defend it claim that anti-values are rewarded from the top down, and that the consequences will hit everyone, everywhere. Some confine it to Spain and the Mediterranean; others reply that northern Europe is no different, just tidier about it. Nobody offers proof, but the debate grows harsher.

The discourse takes on religious and apocalyptic overtones, and blends with unverified claims, such as the alleged coordination of a new wave of arrivals across six digital platforms. It is a narrative that, however intense, runs out of factual support. And perhaps that is the most unsettling part: that fatalism no longer needs data to pass as truth.

Meanwhile, the economy keeps turning, as if the markets had never heard the verdict. But distrust, that asset that trades on no exchange, is already being priced into expectations. The end of the world may be an exaggeration; the upside-down world, in its own way, is already becoming real.