Health of the nation

If the UK’s finances were a person, you would have diagnosed a potentially fatal illness a year ago. The patient was mortally wounded, bleeding heavily, and it was only after extraordinary and emergency resuscitation at the last minute that the danger of death was averted.

The causes of the organ failure were it seems due to the patient bingeing in an unprecendented way, consuming large amounts of unsuitable sustenance, a poison in fact.

Any medical practitioner having regard to such an illness and the excesses of the patient, would administer to the recovered - and hopefully contrite patient - a stern lecture on the evils of over-imbibing. A doctor would explain in words of one syllable the consequence of similar excesses and would spell out in very certain terms the very likely danger of death if such behaviour happened again.

A sensible patient, having had a near-death experience, would then mend their ways, choosing instead of their usual excesses a more frugal existence and avoid, like the proverbial plague, the very behaviour which had brought them so low.

I don’t see any of that in the alleged resurgence of financial health. We seem to have side-stepped the issues and the patient, if anything, is being encouraged to carry on as before. Consumption, growth – these are the terms we hear commentators crowing about, as if they are anything to be proud of.

It looks to me as if the patient still has not received the message. I fear that it will limp along, becoming increasingly over-weight, talking the talk but not desisting temptation nor doing the walks and the runs it should. And as Greenspan says, yes, it will all happen again, the patient will never really learn.

World Economic Forum 2009

I think it was my second ever blog - 16 November 2007 - do check back - when I wrote:

"I don't know about you but I get very worried about economists who keep telling us that markets must grow in order to have success. Have they not worked out that we live on a sphere with limited resources?

There must come a time, it's just common sense, when we have to stop acquiring, we have to stop growing our aspirations, our belongings, our greed. Because it we don't do it voluntarily eventually it will catch up with us in a most unpleasant way.

I crave the day when a Chancellor of the Exchequer says we must maintain our current levels, we must make do and mend, we must grow the principle of re-use, re-manufacture, and build a truly sustainable and green economy. At the moment government ministers - especially those in favour of plastering the south east with high-density flats - use the word 'sustainability' all over the place with little regard to its true meaning. "

And so it has come to pass that the economic leaders of the world meet like headless chickens to discuss something that they no longer understand and over which they have no longer any control.

Was it just me that knew it all had to stop somewhere? No, of course not. I'd discussed my misgivings about the greed culture many times with friends. We often contemplated how a couple that we knew, without a full-time job between the two of them, had managed to acquire three houses. It turned out they just walked down to the mortgage shop, signed on the dotted line, and became property owners. Simple as that. Only of course we knew it wasn't that simple because common sense told us it couldn't last.

Even though it's all now happened, the baby has gawn darn the plug'ole with the bath water, still we hear nothing about sustainability. Still government ministers talk about economic growth and debt as it if were something that can be sustained infinitely. With the truth staring them in the face they still don't seem to 'get it'. Meanwhile thousands of ordinary people, many of whom never made a greedy decision about property or possessions have been plunged into spiralling financial disaster.

We must start talking about a financial system which is infinitely sustainable and that will support a life-style that is sustainable. That means less greed for all of us. There is absolutely no point in aspiring to go back to the position that we were in originally. 16 November seems a long time ago but my wishes have not changed.