Bank Holiday

I think one’s overdue, don’t you?  But this time let’s big it up a bit. 

I don’t mean the sort of bank that looks after my money for me, pays my bills when I tell it to, keeps my diamonds in a safe, and charges me a reasonable, profitable fee for doing all that  (although there’s an unfilled niche market for one or two of those, it seems).  You know what kind of bank I mean.

On the news this evening, there was the entirely non-ironic juxtaposition, within minutes of each other, of the news of Barclays’(and, obviously, many others’) bent touts, under orders from their untaxed moral-free puppet-masters, having rigged fundamental market prices, over years – not just a rogue operative acting alone, even they recognise that one doesn’t wash any more – to their own benefit (and to the cost of the rest of the planet); and the fear that the forthcoming failure of the EU politicians, for the twentieth time (that’s not an exaggeration!), to sort out the so-called Euro crisis will (I quote) ‘panic the markets into hitherto uncharted territory’.

WHAT??  How much more of this sort of diarrhoea do they (I mean the Merkels, Osbournes and Diamonds) expect us to put up with? 

I have a modest proposal.  Shut down the capital markets, all of them, for say a fortnight.  Completely.  Worldwide.  Put all the touts on gardening leave.  And let’s see what difference it makes in the real world.  It’s not as drastic as it sounds – it seems to work on Sundays.