It’s the economy, stoopid 25.09.08
IN keeping with the general
trend of the news over the past week, and because humour
column rule 11A states that occasionally the column must
cover some serious topics, and because I couldn’t think
of anything else to write about I was going to just
cancel the column this week and put in pictures instead,
but now I have decided to write about the state of the
economy.
I know, I know, who wants to read about serious stuff
like economic downturns anyway? I don’t know about you,
but I’d have to admit that I’m not all that well versed
when it comes to understanding the ins and outs of all
this economic jargon, but it all seems pretty scary.
All this stuff about rates and percentages and balance
of trade surpluses and deficits, hard currency, soft
currency, liquid assets and equity, the list goes on and
on and it’s all very confusing. |
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Maybe I’m just being a tad
simplistic here, but my understanding of how things
worked was something like this.
If I spend a euro, then somebody somewhere makes a euro,
or at least part of a euro. I get what I wanted for my
money, whoever made and sold that item got something for
it and we’re all happy.
And if I don’t want to spend my euro I can go along to
my bank, put the euro into my bank and the bank, a great
guardian of money will keep it safe for me until I want
it back.
Umm, unless the bank goes bust that is. Yep folks, most
of the outcry over the past few weeks has followed the
shocking news of banks all over America going bust
quicker than a bag of balloons in a hawthorn bush.
Now there’s a comforting thought. But what I want to
know is how did that happen?
I mean if the banks don’t have our money and the
governments don’t have any, who the hell has it?
Surely all of our efforts should be put combined to try
and find whoever it is that is taking all of the money
and wrecking all of the economies and making those men
in the stock markets go grey overnight because they had
gambled away all our money and lost.
Unless of course nobody took it and it has all just been
sucked into a big black hole in outer space where it
will swirl around for all eternity with all the odd
socks.
That does remain a possibility, except for the bit about
it swirling around in outer space. I mean it’s all just
numbers on some computer screen somewhere, the actual
cash doesn’t disappear in an instant (I think that only
happens in cartoons), so it has to go somewhere.
But where is the question? Surely all we have to do is
ask all the bureau de changes in the world to let the
rest of us know when somebody comes in and tries to
exchange $900 billion into euro, or the other way around
or into some other currency for that matter.
In the meantime of course we can all play our part to
help. Firstly after you read this column and admire it
and think that guy must be a genius to be able to come
up with stuff like this every week, you have to forget
you ever saw it.
I know that will be difficult because the sheer genius
and humour of it will want to linger long in your brain,
but trust me on this, I think I know what I’m doing.
You see, apparently we talked ourselves into this
crisis. So from now on, unless I still can’t think on
anything else to write about next week, this will be the
last of it you’ll see here. |
Next thing you’ll need to
do is change your breakfast routine. I know this might
be difficult for some, but again I think it will help.
You see it would also appear that something called the
‘credit crunch’ has played a huge role in this economic
downturn and has people who don’t have belts wondering
what they are going to do, since they’ve nothing to
tighten.
So if every one of us were to eat just one bowl of this
‘credit crunch’ every day it would be a big help and
sure you never know, we could have the whole thing
sorted out just in time to loosen the oul belts and go
mad again at Christmas… |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
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