Nationalise money - problem solved

I pity the governments of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain (the PIIGS). They are doing their best to keep the wolf from the door but at every turn private investors pose impertinent questions and scupper their initiatives.

The truth is really very simple (what follows is a distillation of many research papers helpfully collected together - here - by a fellow blogger).

Governments print money. If they run short, perhaps because of the additional overtime paid to equality and diversity SWAT teams whenever a duskily hewed homosexualite has been refused promotion, all they need do is print another few million and the problem is solved. Or, to be exact, it would be solved if it weren't for those pesky private sector investors complaining that the additional tenners swishing through the system dilute the value of their cash reserves. And why would the problem be solved? Why does the printing of more ten pound notes not cause problems to anyone other than conspiratorial facist investors? For the answer to that question we need a short lesson in very modern economic history.

You see, it's Gordon Brown. He understood and we should all learn at his feet. More government spending means more economic activity. More economic activity is good, therefore more government spending is good. Got a town that's looking a bit crummy? Simple. Print 20 million tenners and spend them in that town building skate parks, healthy eating clinics and climate awareness centres, then print another 20 million to pay salaries. A crummy town? Not any more it isn't. It has skate parks, healthy eating clinics and climate awareness centres, it has a thousand people on good salaries manning these essential front-line public services. Misery has turned to universal joy and happiness. Crummytown is renamed Brownsville and all is right with the world. We know all this to be true because this was the basis of the economic miracle forged by Gordon Brown in his decade in the Treasury.

Only one group ever argued against Mr Brown as he stood triumphant before the World. That group was people and companies who forced Mr Brown to borrow money from them rather than just continually print more on the old hand platen that has been in the back bedroom at 11 Downing Street since 1805 (it proved a little inconvenient while the Blair family lived at Number 11 but Brown had a key and he was delighted to find the printing press was in the boys' bedroom).

One might think he should have just printed more, however that was fraught with political difficulties. If Gordon Brown is one thing, he is a man of the big tent. Not for him the marginalising or exclusion of any group, least of all those who might complain that he was acting out of small-minded, party-political spite. He simply had to keep the international financiers happy, to do otherwise would strike at the essential core of inclusive humanity that defines his moral compass. Much though he hated to do so, he knew his duty - that duty was to borrow hundreds of billions on the money markets in order to prove his fair-mindedness. It wasn't a problem because he only needed to spend a few more hours with the plates and ink in the back bedroom, a task that could be undertaken at any time once the usurous financiers had been repaid.

To complete this short history I must refer to what some have called "Brown's Bunker". The theory goes that Gordon Brown surrounded himself with a small group of yes-men, working out of one room at Number 10, insulated from and antipathetic to any voices of disagreement. Papers recently disclosed by an impeccable source prove beyond doubt that the only bunker in Downing Street during the Brown years was that specially created to house the enormous printing presses and stocks of "paper" required for Gordon to stimulate the economy after the wicked international bankers had made such a mess of their businesses they had to be bailed-out.

What cannot be ignored is that Gordon Brown's economic miracle would have continued unabated, and he would now be President for Life, were it not for the nasty private sector pretending its money was as pure as that produced in Downing Street. He was a victim of his own fairness and honesty because he could not bear the thought of a single banker's child losing their pony or being deprived of lacrosse coaching. In the circumstances of the time he was, of course, absolutely right, as he remains on every topic to this day. Nonetheless, his fairness created a bit of a pickle - a pickle for which he is not in any way to blame, we know this because he tells us so every time he is paid many thousands of pounds to give a speech.

It will be a matter of great regret until my dying day that the general election of 2010 came just before Gordon Brown had the chance to put into effect the final piece of his masterly jigsaw. Having, he thought, proved that all economic ills are caused by private sector businesses, the time was ripe for nationalisation of the funds held by these wicked shysters. No need for printing presses, a simple CHAPS transfer to HM Treasury would do the trick. There would no longer be any private sector investors involved in the UK economy, everything would be under the benevolent hand of the greatest economist the World has ever known - the man who knew that every hitch could be overcome by creating more bank notes.

All across the Eurozone we now see the greatness of his wisdom. Why is Greece in a mess? It's simple, private financiers are demanding repayment of their investments with interest. What an utterly absurd state of affairs it is. All Greece need do is nationalise the money it has been lent and its problems will be over. It will owe nothing. The slate will be wiped clean. What's more, it could then turn on the printing presses and boost its economy just as Gordon Brown did to the UK economy from 2003-7. So too for the rest of the PIIGS. They are foreigners so they would face no moral impediment as Mr Brown had with the bankers.

A country's credit rating cannot be downgraded if it never borrows, even more so if there are no credit rating agencies and there would not be once the vital step to economic harmony and perpetual glee was put in place. Mr Brown understood this. All you need do is nationalise all money and the problems not just of the PIIGS but also of every nation would disappear at a stroke.

True climate threat - Addendum

In the comments to my last piece Mr Choos suggested that the Himalayas cause no problems to the climate so we shouldn't be concerned about buildings. I'm sorry to have to say this but he displays a desperate ignorance of the modern approach to science. Let me take you back to first principles.

In fact, let me start with an example drawn from different fields of study, zoology and modern anthropology. We all know that when lions need food they kill a nice antelope or zebra then tear off lumps of warm flesh and feast until sated. On occasions they might accidentally take a bit while their prey is still alive, but usually they ensure it is dead and the heart has stopped beating because they don't like to drink a lot of claret with their dinner. All aspects of the conduct of lions are to be applauded because they are natural beasts and do what Mother Nature intended they should do. We know she intended them to do it because they do it out of instinct, no television chefs or recipe books lead them from the path of natural righteousness.

Human beings on the other hand are subject to the wicked and unnatural forces of western commerce, a branch of what is mistakenly known as western "culture". Modern anthropology has established that the natural state for human beings is to live exclusively at ground level and eat only vegetative matter. You might have heard some "nature deniers" dispute this fact by reference to human canine teeth which, they claim, evidence a natural inclination to eat meat. Like so many of the denialist smokescreens applied in a vain attempt to deflect from the true path of modern climate science, this is a deliberate misinterpretation of basic facts in order to promote the interests of Big Oil. The true position is that human beings have canine teeth in order to allow them to make holes in babies earlobes prior to the insertion of raffia earrings as a sign of obeisance to Mother Nature and Her most bounteous crop.

We know that this is so because it was tested on computers. To be precise, in 1985 three Commodore 64s were used at the same time in different rooms at the Polytechnic of Mid Sussex and each produced an identical printout saying "yes" when asked "are human canine teeth designed for use in piercing babies' ears (glory be to Gaia)?" They had each been programmed by the Polytechnic's foremost expert in modern anthropology, Miss Camomile Tea, to provide the truth as disclosed in her seminal work Mother Nature's Labia. Of course we could just look the answer up in the book, canine appears in the index between camping and clitoris; but that would only provide partial proof. Those who wish to adopt old-fashioned methodology would assert that it is just Miss Tea's theory (although on this particular point her sister, Rich, helped with the basic analysis). To support her theory it was necessary that computers said the same thing, so she got some computers, set them up to test the hypothesis and they agreed with it. And there you have it, conclusive proof, computers have settled the science.

Having established this fundamental difference between human beings and lions it is necessary to identify the significance and what it tells us about human behaviour. On the one hand we have lions killing with aplomb in order to satisfy their natural instinct for food. On the other hand we have human beings murdering chickens, pigs, sheep, horses and cows in pursuit of an unnatural urge to consume the flesh of other creatures. The difference is that the former is natural and the latter is unnatural. They might seems like the same activities at heart - ending the life of another animal and eating it's flesh - but in fact they are completely different. One complements Gaia's great plan and the other does violence to it. One maintains the natural pattern of things, the other disturbs that pattern and necessarily causes other consequential damage in the process.

So it is also with the natural Himalayas and unnatural human-created buildings. When the Himalayas were developed Mother Nature took rock as only she can and turned it into a perfect form. In doing so she enhanced the balance of nature that, after all, is her job - she is incapable of doing anything else. It cannot be that the Himalayas interrupt the flow of air or cause Earth to rotate otherwise than perfectly because they are natural. The truth is that they steer air to where Mother Nature wants it and they stabilise the rotation of the planet. By definition, because they are natural they help create a perfect system. Human-caused protuberances above ground level, however, are a different kettle of ballgame. They are unnatural because they are the result of conscious decisions of human beings under the influence of Big Oil in comparison to the instinctive reactions of lions under the influence of Mother Nature.

The great Miss Tea has long since passed to the recycling centre in the sky but her book is still available. As far as I know there is now only one source (here).

The true climate threat from industrialisation

Concern has occasionally been expressed in the comments to some of my scribblings about the ability of our planet to sustain many more human beings than are in existence today. Can enough food be grown? Where will they be housed? How will sufficient electricity be generated? Will we run out of plastic for all the additional roll-on deodorants? The questions never end. There is even a body supported by one of the Attenboroughs calling for huge reductions in world population and citing alarming guesses about the dire consequences of allowing lesser beings to have children. Although these modern day eugenicists overstate their case quite pathetically there is a smidgen of truth behind what they say.

Resources are finite and occasionally we run of stuff. At my local fish and chip shop it is usually fish at about ten o'clock on a Friday night. On a larger scale the world has run out of mammoth skins for coats, dodo eggs for omelettes and any number of reptile skins for shoes. So far ingenious humans have found alternatives and we have been able to sustain more and more people in more and more comfort as the years have passed. But it seems to me that along the way we have done far more damage to the earth than has yet been reported. No doubt it is just too frightening a prospect for the powers-that-be to allow it to be known. A recent paper has quantified the damage but it's very technical. Hours of work have resulted in my humble self being able to distill the gist of the problem. Please bear with me while I explain.

Calculations that are central to our understanding of the physical world make certain assumptions - sometimes broad and sometimes narrow. It is, for example, assumed that the planet orbits the sun once a year (or so), that it turns on its axis once a day (or so) and that there are small wobbles in its movement. These assumptions lie behind our calculations of time but, more importantly, they underpin all assessments of how our climate will change.

The problem, recently explained at length in the paper I mentioned, is that human beings have affected each of these assumptions. They have done so by disturbing the weight-balance of Earth and by interrupting natural air flows so as to change both the rate of rotation of the planet and many other things beside. One thing and one thing only that has done this damage - building.

As weight is transferred from on or under the planet's surface in the form of clay, rock, stone, slaked lime, slate and pozzolans into above-ground structures in the form of buildings, the natural balance between that which is at or below ground-level and that which is above ground level is altered.

Artificial height blocks the air that would otherwise flow freely above the ground, pushes it higher and causes it to increase its speed in order to reach its destination at the originally planned time. The buildings themselves act as buffers, slowing the rotation of the planet just as a parachute fired from the back of a fighter jet slows its progress after landing.

In addition removing natural products from the surface thins the crust of the planet and creates man-made hollows that attract water not intended for that place. As time progresses these artificial lakes will erode the surface further because a hollow created anthropogenically is a very different thing from a natural crater. Being a forced tear in the surface of the planet it cannot heal as a natural crater heals and will not retain water because it will not have the natural seal that forms on the surface, of nature's craters. Instead the surface will be weak and flaky and will be eroded quickly by water that settles in it, especially if that water is agitated by human activity such as boating, fishing and ducks-and-drakes.

If that is not already enough, the news gets worse. Where these materials, ripped from the very womb of Gaia, are piled high into monstrous icons to the wickedness that is industrialisation they add weight to the surface, weight for which it was never designed. Albeit it very slowly, ground level at the edges of our largest cities is rising as the weight of the city presses down; but that is a minor problem. Of far greater concern is the effect it has on the balance of Earth's rotation.

It is not by coincidence that we measure rotation by examining what happens to the Greenwich Meridian. When such matters were first thought about it was clear to all that London led the way. Just as a dancer executes a spin by moving the lead shoulder first (the right shoulder for an anti-clockwise spin and the left if turning clockwise) so our planet spins by moving London first. The more weight we add to London, the more difficult it is for the turn to start and the more difficult it is for it to stop at the expected time. Even a minor delay or overshoot can upset the balance of the climate throughout the planet.

Unless we spread weight more evenly and, in particular, reduce the weight of London, we can expect ever more floods, hurricanes, droughts and pestilence because the natural balance will remain disturbed and Mother Nature will take her revenge.

This might seem somewhat far-fetched to those who have not studied the source materials in detail. But if you think this is silly, you should read what people say about carbon dioxide. I urge you to read the detailed paper to which I refer, I think you will be persuaded, you will find it here.