Merchant Bankers

Cockney Rhyming Slang.

Well. We have the British Airways staff going on strike, the N 25 only being partly built, the A 11 imploding south of Thickthorn, the MoD probably closing an airbase and cancelling plans to upgrade the fighter force, interest rates at almost zero and the Daily Mirror fronting a campaign to rubbish the climate change gurus.

Any connections?

Strangely, yes. It's the banks. Or, more precisely, the antics of the government and the merchant bankers over their bail-outs and their bonuses.

I cheerfully confess, with pride, that I neither understand nor particularly care about economics. It's just a pseudo-science. How else can you explain the crazy way money has been acting.

For example, you might reasonably expect that when the government is borrowing record sums of money to fund the bankers greed and The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street's penchant for toxic assets that interest rates would be sky high to attract investors.

They are nil.

Question one on the Economics 101 final exam: explain.

We are assured that no money can be found to fund essential infrastructure projects, yet the pit full of funds to bail out the banks is seemingly bottomless. The sums are colossal and should mean high interest rates. Explain please.

For climate change read bankers bail-out. Who else will benefit from an increase in global infrastructure projects. Yep, it's the bankers.

When British Airways goes bust with a massive hole in their pension fund who gets the goodies? Bankers.

And, when the MoD can't find a few millions to protect the nation who should we thank? No prizes for guessing - the bankers.

Am I just taking cheap shots at everyone's favourite target for being crossed off their Christmas card list and saving a few pennies that way. Not really, the bankers have just about finished off the Royal Mail in their spare time.

Come the revolution, these greedy geeks in pin-stripes will be exchanging their garments for real stripes as they are marched (with their bogus bonuses and bulging bank accounts confiscated to fund real progress for real people) straight into the Gulag.

Can't wait.