Since the great financial crisis began, a number of newspaper pundits have said that one consolation was that we'd all understand economics a lot better in future. The GOS has taken this to heart, and has been diligently trying to get it all straight in his rather woolly old mind.
Here is his take on the situation …
1. You work hard all your life, take reasonable decisions, behave responsibly and build up a little nest-egg to see you through your retirement.
2. You give your nest-egg to a bank to look after and keep safe.
3. The bank takes half of it and gives it so some executive for his Christmas bonus, and lends the rest to an out-of-work builders' labourer (some Poles came along offering to do twice the work for half the money) who can't see why he, his girlfriend and six children of various parentage shouldn't have a five bedroom house with a Jacuzzi like everyone else but has little prospect of paying it back because there's the BMW and all the foreign holidays to pay for first.
4. The bank fails, and may or may not take your money with it. Actually, it won't because it doesn't have your money any more. The builders' labourer has, and the executive who is now out of a job but can always sell the ten bedroom mansion in Sunningdale and the Lamborghini (but probably not the Porsche - I mean, you have to get around, don't you?) so that's all right.
5. But never fear, all is not lost! Kindly old Uncle McGordon McBroon has seen this coming, and sympathises with your plight. He has announced that he will guarantee up to £50,000 of your nest-egg in any one bank. So whoopee! You can get your money back.
6. Unfortunately the government isn't a charity, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch and all that money has to come from somewhere. So your tax bill is going up. By about £50,000, probably.
7. Meanwhile the builders' labourer has had his house repossessed. He and his girlfriend and their six sprogs are out on the street so the local council has had to find them somewhere to live. The regulations say that children of different sexes can't share a bedroom and the six children are all of different sexes and as the council doesn't have any seven bedroom council houses (actually, it only has three council houses since Mrs.Thatcher invented the right to buy and landlords of foreign extraction bought them all to rent out to their far-flung families) so it has to rent one from a private landlord of foreign extraction who charges twice what it's worth. The council officials don't give a toss because after all it's not their money, is it, so they pay up. This means that at the end of the year council tax has to rise because there's no such thing as a free lunch and all that money etc. etc.
8. And meanwhile the bank executive has managed to avoid the privations of selling his Sunningdale mansion and Lambo by landing a job with the government. They've put him in charge of a commission advising the prime minister on how to regulate the banking industry. They're paying him roughly what he was getting at the bank, plus a sweetener for being so kind as to help them out, and they've promised him a £1m bonus - all he has to do is stick with the job for a year, keep quiet and not criticise anyone in the cabinet, and not shag his secretary on the premises.
9. At the end of it all you (that's the original you, the one who saved diligently and amassed a modest little nest-egg) still have your nest-egg, but it's only worth 60% what it did to start with. As old age creeps on, it won't be enough to fund a care home but the state won't look after you because you've got it, you can't find an NHS dentist for love nor money, your GP has been subsumed in a super-duper medical shopping-mall where you, being a bit elderly and doddery, can't even find your way to the reception desk let alone get to see a doctor, the nearest hospital is forty miles away but you can't even afford to drive your little car to the supermarket, let alone the hospital, because you need a mortgage to buy some petrol and you know how hard it is to get a mortgage since the banks all overstretched themselves, and besides you couldn't afford any food when you got there because Mrs.Tesco's had a lean time with her libel suits lately and has had to put prices up to cover the shortfall.
10. Frankly you'd be better off dead, but have you seen the price of funerals these days?
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Copyright © 2008 The GOS
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