Wow the world’s a mess isn’t it? I’m finding it so interesting watching as day after day another group of economists, traders or world bank institutions start to forecast a complete global economy collapse. I don’t understand it all, but it seems everyone’s now borrowed up to their eyeballs and what with bail outs draining the few remaining steady country’s banks dry, I’m guessing there will just be one day where someone announces there is no money left in the world at all and then we’ll all panic. Or let China take over. I wish I was more clever to really understand the ins and outs, but honestly, what does happen if the economy does just collapse? Will it be like the Soviet Union in the 80’s when people would have to cart a wheelbarrow full of money to buy bread? I never understood why those people didn’t save a lot of hard work and effort and just use their debit card. Or why other people didn’t try and rob them? Though I guess if that much dosh only bought a loaf of bread, then stealing a handful of it would barely get you a penny sweet and therefore be more effort than its worth.
What I’m curious about is that if the global economy did collapse bit by bit, starting with the crumbling of the Euro, then surely we’d all be ok? I mean surely money would cease to be of value at all? How could a shop ask for money to buy something if they themselves don’t have money to buy their stock and so on and so forth? I’m sure its not as simple as that. As the loathsome trader said on the BBC interview yesterday ‘anyone can make money from a crash’ and I guess that someone will always still be rich even when everyone else can barely afford to survive. But what I don’t understand is that if, say, the US economy collapses, the Eurozone collapses, and large parts of the rest of the world owe money to those factions, who will be making money? China and India? Well maybe, but who will buy their exports? Again, this is an overview I have without any clue as to how it actually works, but I am hugely entertaining myself hoping that we can go back to the days before monks invented banks. Or before money was invented.
I almost long for the idea that I could swap three bags of potatoes for a car. I’m not sure where I’d get the potatoes from in the first place, but I’d damn well try. It’d be lovely if all of us had to have something to give to receive. I’d do some jokes for some tomatoes you grow in your garden, someone else can knit a jumper in return for getting their washing machine fixed. It can’t be that difficult can it? Someone who’s good at drawing charts can draw charts that say exactly what everything ever is worth in comparison to every other thing ever, and suddenly we’ll have an exchange rate based on conkers and lentils rather than the US Dollar or the Yen.
Of course it won’t happen. Things will just get worse, public services will suffer as governments continue to lend money they don’t really have to people who are broke because of borrowing money they didn’t have and no one will ever point out that as it doesn’t exist in the first place and really, in comparison the life, the universe and everything, its really insignificant and we should probably just press ‘clear’ and start again. I should so so totally be in charge sometimes.
