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The Electric Light Orchestra lyrics “… you took me ohh, higher and higher baby, it’s a living thing, it’s a terrible thing …” have been mulling through my head over the past week as central bankers’ inflation-fighting rhetoric moved to centre stage.

A succession of hawkish comments from US policymakers persuaded pundits that the US rate-cutting cycle was over, resulting in a stronger US dollar, plummeting government bonds, predominantly lower global stock markets (with Asia seeing the most red), and non-agricultural commodities coming off the boil.

After stock markets have held up bravely in the face of the credit crises and mounting economic woes, a combination of renewed concerns about the financial sector, a record-breaking spurt in the oil price, and a rotten unemployment number claimed their toll on Friday, triggering a sharp sell-off in most parts of the world.

Santa Barbara is hardly the picture of poverty. Oprah’s mansion is there, and the city’s median house is worth a cool million. Heck, I proposed to my wife there — we ate some tremendous sushi on State Street and relished in the city’s upscale vibe.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that 12 of Santa Barbara’s parking lots have recently been converted into nightly homeless shelters!

A CNN story highlighted the case of a car dweller who sleeps in one of these parking lots every night. Were drugs a factor in her demise? Nope. How about mental illness? Not at all.