This is another of these reported episodes of supposed stratospheric financial fraud that just stretches credulity beyond breaking point. Either we accept that world economic and financial systems are effectively fictional observances, which they are:
- inflation and deflation are both, simultaneously, bad, good and essential;
- quantitative easing is the literal printing of more money;
- banks must be regulated by government, independant from government, underwritten by goverment;
- every country in the world needs to show export and not import;
- recent reports bemoan that a lack of consumer borrowing and purchasing is causing a deflation spiral, yet we are constantly told that the western world is beset by over-extended credit and over-consumption.
....or we wake up. But we won't, because we can't truly stop our dependancy.
Every so often the media wheels-out a setpiece, a saviour or a villain. The Lehman Brothers, Emron, Nick Leeson, Barings, Equitable, Icelandics, Mark Carney, Tech bubble, Dot com bubble, Fred the Shred.
This is all just a fabricated self-propelled soap-opera. The whole market, derivatives trading, toxic assets, PPP....all of it only 'works' as long as, like Wiley E Coyote, nobody looks down as they run out from the cliff. It's just a silk and honeycomb synthesis of collaborative nothingness, a game that we all conspire to depend upon.
And with that curious, infuriating, enlightening and incomprehensible Robert Peston acting as BBC Chief Economics Editor, at least we've got a good handle on things. Remember: inarticulate eloquence and a wide tonal range will sell you anything from astrology to zoroastrianism:
