Is the world better, the same, or worse than 12 months ago? 

Here is how the world looked this week a year ago.

There was a massive earthquake off the Kamchatka Peninsula leading to tsunami alerts across Japan.

Donald Trump made various threatening statements about tariffs, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Ukraine.

The UK said it was looking at major immigration reforms.

Shares in the UK and the US were at record highs, but there was growing concern that an AI bubble will pop stock markets.

In other words, the world doesn’t look dramatically different today than it did 12 months ago.

There’s been some movement of course. Even the most ardent climate change deniers are shifting their positions in light of the fires in Europe.

Some leading commentators are now taking the position that, yes, it is real, but there’s nothing we can do about it so might as well embrace a Mediterranean climate.

On whether the world is better/worse/the same as a year ago, if you just relied on the business press and the doom scrolling that is blighting our lives, you’d almost certainly think that everything is much worse.

That US politics are clearly more frightening than ever.

A brilliant (newish) book by the sadly, recently, departed Ed Stourton, is good for perspective on this.

Made in America – the dark history that led to Donald Trump, explains the historical precedents for pretty much everything the US president does.

It’s not a light read, but it does offer hope that we will get through all of this, since we always have before.

I think one function of the flak trade these days is to counterbalance the idea that we are all doomed.

Since there are fewer old hacks around who have seen it all before, we perhaps need the longer-term perspective to come from your experts.

Tell us how what is happening today should remind us of what happened before.

AJ Bell is very good at this, but there’s room for more.

Even if the news is mostly bad, there are still winners out there.

Maybe they include London in general and the City specifically.

The temptation for news desks is to commission more and more bad news stories, or else to ignore the bad news since it is too depressing.

There’s a middle ground that we might call something like the truth. Help us get there.

Tomorrow’s Business is taking its summer vacation. It shall return on Tuesday September 1. Thanks for your support this year.