It's a consequence of watching too much yes minister, something Sir Humphrey does when he is picking on Bernard sometimes, don't worry, just my being silly.
On GM, no I don't think they will react when they should I think in truth they allready should have done and it will be a back breaking, hit the road running effort to desperately keep the thing afloat but I also think we just will, as we allways do. We end up getting into a nice little economic period and instead of preparing to weather the next storm we decide to live in luxury and cut taxes, give people computers and build NRL hall of fames. When the time comes and something absolutely must be done however most governments are smart enough to make the draconian cuts to non essentials to rustle up the stimulation packages.
As for my hope in GM, I know there are risks involved and if we don't discover what I'm hoping for and it turns out to be a boondoggle we'll be up the creek without a paddle. But I honestly don't know what else we can hope for? The Earths population, save a plague or war is going to keep getting bigger, we'd be silly to try and cheat that fact, we aren't about to just stumble upon a huge untapped area full of natural resources that can keep us going and even if we did it would be a finite solution. As i see it the only other way out of it aside from GM is that we urgently stop wasting fertile ground and begin using it to optimum efficiency, no more Vanilla Beans, Coffee, Tabacco or decoratively flowers, instead we need to be using them for efficient, easy grown crops, I'm not a farmer but judging by their popularity I'd say they would be staples like rice, considering how well my tomtao's are growing I'd hazard a guess and say they're pretty good as well. But gee whiz golly i think we'd have a better chance in convicing people to pay a little more tax so we can explore GM then of telling them only staples from now on.