What does recession, large-scale financial institutional collapse and currency devaluation bring to mind?

Of course: Planet of the Apes, where a hierarchy of primate greed is to blame for our fiscal woes.

Giant Apes - Capitalists ruling the Jungle through asset management

Orangutans - Puppet leaders in power positions, yet controlled by Apes

Gorillas - Enforcers whose brute strength protects the Apes power

Chimpanzees - Masses of workers manipulated like the Humanoids

Flying Monkeys - New high-tech species immigrated from Land of Oz

Even though MarketWatch columnist Paul B. Farrell goes way overboard with the damn-dirty-apes motif, he does present a crazy-quilt cast that somehow makes sense. Take, for example, the Wall Street equivalents for one simian class:

Orangutans: Puppet Leaders

8. Politicians, Congress & Executive. Follow lobbyists’ orders; love perks, status

9. Securities and Exchange Commission. Always favors industry over investors

10. Mutual fund directors. Paid over $250,000 annually, favor their insiders

I guess the appropriate d’enouement to this monkey business will be the realization that this was our planet all along. You maniacs, you blew it all up!

Casting the bilateral relationship between the United States and Great Britain as a dysfunctional gay-male love affair?

That’s theater for you. And for me, as I plan to snag tickets soon to Caryl Churchill’s “Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?” at the Public Theater, East Village ways, to see this imaginative spectacle for myself. Sexual politics, without the sexual part — or is that, without the politics part? Either way, brilliant!

It’s not exactly political-thriller material (but that’s okay):

The second of the play’s seven scenes ends with this exchange:

SAM: being powerful and being on the side of good is

GUY: God must have so much fun

SAM: win win win

GUY: love you more than I can

That’s Sam (get it?) and Guy (get it?), in something like love. If you know anything about recent geopolitical history, you can guess who’s the pitcher and who’s the catcher…