Should we regard your symposium (“The Rudd Essay & the Financial Crisis”, May 2009) responding to the Rudd essay, commencing with Eric Hobsbawm, as a sign of the times? That the comments of this treasonous propagandist from the 1930s should be considered relevant to this debate is telling. “Unquestionably the most formidable interpreter of the patterns of world history” indeed. At least we can take some comfort that in this current crisis the old boy has little to suggest as to where to go from here; we will have to wait for yet another of his perverse interpretations ex post facto. Alas, Prime Minister Rudd and some of his international counterparts have much to suggest, solutions consistent with the inferred “times” above. Depressingly though, in this gathering storm I see no leaders, Churchillian or otherwise, emerging to debunk the current (and original) incarnations of Eric Hobsbawm.