Credit Crunch! Good thing or bad thing?

There seems to be nothing like a good financial crisis to get the lunatics that run this asylum we call a country running around like headless chickens completely undecided whether any particular circumstance is a) A Good Thing, or b) A Bad Thing. Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it? Is it a good thing, or is it a bad thing?

Inflation. Bad thing. The Bank of England, no less, has been put in charge of interest rate just to ensure that they can put them up regularly enough to make sure inflation remains in check. Suddenly it starts to go down. So that must be a good thing – right? Oh, no. Deflation means prices actually go down and that’s a bad thing too. Why? Well apparently the lunatics think we won’t buy anything because the prices might go down even further. So what do they do? They cut interest rates to make us think we have a load more money and we will be tricked into going out to buy more things. Next time I’m borrowing money to buy a loaf of bread I’ll remember that.

House Prices. Going up. Bad thing. First time buyers can’t afford them. Coming down. Bad thing. First time buyers, now with six kids, are stuck with a one bed flat over the Chip Shop that is worth £100,000 less than they paid for it. They can’t pay their mortgage or there would be nothing left for the necessities like Sky TV, fags, booze and bingo – not to mention baby Kylie’s ear piercing.

Oil Prices. This one I just love. Going up to $150 a barrel. Bad thing. All them Sheiks getting richer and buying up our football clubs (unless you are Norwich City, in which case not even an Arab will be interested). Petrol costs rocket as soon as there is even a suggestion that the prices are about to rise in a few weeks time. Oil prices come down to under $50 a barrel. Bad thing. We are all, naturally, driving around far more polluting the environment and damaging polar bears and dolphins. It matters not that dolphins are overrated, po-faced creatures who spend all their time swimming around with sick kid and thin people. Gas and Electricity company spokespeople, who were telling anyone who would listen that their price hikes were all because their energy was linked to the oil price, develop laryngitis. Petrol prices don’t come down to match but grudgingly do drop a little, unless you use diesel or buy your fuel in Long Stratton. Now comes the good bit. Bad thing because the government are getting less revenue from taxes on the oil companies and on what we buy at the pumps so they need to increase their borrowing!!!!

Now, excuse my ignorance, but who exactly  are they “borrowing” all this money from? I thought everyone was in the same boat. Does the bloke with the twitchy mouth know someone we don’t? Could it be Simon Cowell putting his hand in  his pocket? Anyway, whoever it is we owe them a big vote of thanks. Lending all that money to our leaders so they can do what with it? Oh yes, I was forgetting,  give it to the very people who got us in this mess in the first place – the bankers. And what do we want them to do with it (apart from funding their fat bonuses). Easy! Lend us our own money back so that we can go out and spend it or lend it to the couple over the Chip Shop so that they can pay the interest on their mortgage, which will push house prices and oil prices up and we start all over again.