IT ALL MAKES PERFECT CENTS

– A Glass Half Empty

WORDS: Jill Kerby

We’re making a start in repairing the economy, says the new government, as they tweak and snip in preparation for the next set of cuts and tax hikes in December, so busy-busy and proud as punch at being recognised as the best boys in the slow class in the eurozone club.

They’ve always been convinced that the smart boys – the French and German kids – know what they’re doing in offering to bail us out if we agreed to pay back all the money the even dumber kids who ran our banks borrowed from the sneaky kids who ran their banks. (Not to mention the big overdraft that keeps our ATM machines running.)

And so, we put up with the regular shakedown and give up our allowances, lunch money, runners (even our little brothers’ and grannys’ runners) in the belief that some day we’ll be able to use the rich kids’ credit card again. If only it was that easy.

Unfortunately, the ‘nice’ rich kids don’t call all the shots. There are also a bunch of really scary kids with money from other clubs – called bond markets – who it turns out were also lending at the wrong, the ones that the rich kids had been borrowing from, big time.

These independent lenders took one look at the bailout deal that was put together for the dumb kids from Ireland, Greece and Portugal, and worked out that it was a fudge. Not only that, but some of the other rich kids in the euroclub, specifically, Mario and his friend Pedro, who also owe them money are in big trouble too.

Boys being boys, (even the girls in the club are honorary boys), it’s not going to be easy to get them all together in the same room without beating the living daylights out of each other, let alone agreeing to rework the rules of the club. Which brings me back to a lunch party of girlfriends, and the hostess who didn’t want to think about how much gloomier the economy could become.

Read more about It All Makes Perfect Cents in the Autumn 2011 issue of WMB, on newsstands from September 1st!