Last week the Euromillions lottery was offering £100,000,000, and like many a fellow lemming I thought it might just be worth a punt. What a joke it would be to win £100m! As it was I won £7.50, and in view of the world financial situation I am relieved that I did not win the larger sum. To be in debt at the moment is a much more secure place to be than to have large savings. Those banks with all their notional debts would be desperate to get their hands on my real money and go bust with it so that they could pay off at least a small part of their debt. The UK has foolishly offered to guarantee deposits of £35,000, so savers are anxiously running from bank to bank depositing their savings in £35,000 tranches. It would be hard work to dispose of £100 million in that way. I suspect that any American bank  worth its salt would take the money and go bust instantly. The Irish having bravely offered to guarantee any savings however large could offer some good sport to the one hundred million pound investor. I presume that like any other self respecting western  government the Irish government does not actually possess any funds which are not notional. They will be therefore open to blackmail á la Rupert  Murdoch. Unless the Dáil opens its daily business with a rendition of God Save the Queen I will take away my  100mil. So there!

            I was very impressed by  the reasoning of a witty young American, of the on-the-street type, who was being interviewed about the world financial situation in one of those inane swoops that modern newscasters feel  that they have to do to find out what the people think.  He argued that since so many trillion dollars were needed to bail out the banks and since there were so may hundred million Americans, why not instead give a million to each and every American. What a party that would be!  Sub prime mortgages would all get paid off, everyone would have cash in their pockets to buy, buy, buy and would it be any worse than giving it to just a few men in suits. Most probably not, though if I am anything to go by I don’t suppose the money would last long, but what the  heck it would be fun while it lasted. The only problem is that the American government does not actually possess trillions, nor do its people. It owes trillions, and its bail out of the banks will just be more of the same: notional credits chasing notional debts.