Nationalize Me Too!

Like most of you we are struggling through the global financial meltdown. Personally I have a solution, which I shall now float to you, my peers, to see if it is reasonable.

IMAGINE if over the last ten years or so I had decided to borrow a great deal of money from a bank that didn’t bother to check my credit rating. Then I decided to lend all that money to some people who live down the street from me. They did tell me that they didn’t have a job, or any income other than Social Security, but I was feeling generous, the sun was shining and what the hell.

For a while the price of the property they had borrowed their money against was going up like a cartoon bubble. So my friendly borrowers took a cruise or two, bought some nice new cars, and added an extension. It was all right; after all, the value of their home just kept going up.

Imagine us being so happy with the way this was progressing that we would raise some more money to make some more loans to the guy next door, and he was doing the same thing. No problem, after all the values were all going up. Why not play pass the parcel, we were all winners.

He was in turn borrowing some necessary extra cash so that he could increase his buy to let empire which now numbered nearly 100 properties, all of which were purchased with 100% mortgages, no problem really when the portfolio was always worth more tomorrow than it was worth today.

In fact everyone was making money in property, one way or another everyone was getting richer and spending more as we got accustomed to living in our giant cash machines we used to call our homes.

And then one day the music stopped and everyone woke up to the fact that values of property were impossibly high and couldn’t be maintained, let alone continue to grow relentlessly.

Imagine if I then went to the people who I’d lent money to and they weren’t able to repay me, and I therefore went to the government to ask for a bailout package. In this scenario if they give me the required £100 million we should be able to square the circle and even pay myself a bonus.

I recommend this to all the people down the line who could do with a bit of cash as there is, apparently, a never ending amount of money available if you want it. All you have to do is ask. Who will repay all of this money I hear you ask, well who cares?

Why shouldn’t we all be bailed out if the big banks and money wholesalers are rescued from their own greed and ineptitude?

I don’t actually remember any of these institutions giving us any part of their huge profits over the last years, but now it’s bail out time, they’re at the front of the line, with nothing to cover their shame except the rattling of their begging bowls.

Actually I never did borrow huge amounts of money but we get to suffer losses with the rest of you nevertheless. The value of my property has dropped like a stone and continues to do so. My pensions, backed by shares that are dramatically falling in value have also really dropped. At this precise moment jobs are being lost, bankruptcies increasing and costs of almost everything apart from property and big ticket items that we don’t want is going up.

Do you think, if we asked very nicely, that our government would give us all an unconditional guarantee and pay our bills for a year or two?