It seems that each time I turn the tele on it merely reverberates with gloomy and ominous sound bytes that none of us can do sweet FA about. As far as I can tell no one really has any idea on how to fix it other than trying to stimulate the economy by punching dollars into it. However, it appears governments are fighting a losing battle considering consumer confidence is being manipulated daily with media heralding the message that we’re on a sinking ship and to prepare the lifeboats before we drown in economic collapse. I mean what the fuck  It doesn’t make sense.

Are we supposed to spend or save? On the one hand we’re given the message that the economy depends upon consumer expenditure while on other, the message is loud and clear, your job may not exist tomorrow. The Doom Sayers tell us to save and the economists are telling us to spend. Well if they want to stimulate the economy why tell us that in a few months there’ll be mass lay off’s and we’ll be in the grip of a deep dark recession?

So we’re on the edge of precipice, wavering on the point of falling, the abyss glaring menacingly below. What do we do? Jump? Run? Hide? How about we stare straight down and call it’s bluff? It seems to me that we’re in recession only because we say we are. It’s self fulfilling prophecy. The shit hit the fan when someone called the bluff on the boom so why not engage in reverse psychology and call the bluff on doom? It’s absurd when we cast our minds back to what brought the whole economy to its knees. We were all intoxicated with how well things were going, no one batting an eyelid to the absurdity of trading on the future…

Haven’t we got the deal for you!

What is it?

Well this cheque is the future and it only costs one pound three pence a pop, guaranteed 100 percent return.

Fantastic give me a hundred thousand.

Done! Sold to the highest bidder *shit eating grin*

Future

After going around the merry go round Mr X decides to cash his cheque FUTURE Not Negotiable

I’d like to cash this cheque mister bank manager.

Ok. Lets just punch this into the keyboard here…Err there seems to be a problem.

Oh. What is it?

Well this seems to be a blank cheque.

Yes that’s right. Its the Future and it is now worth Five Trillion Dollars. You can check it. It should be filed under Past Derivatives.

Ok that makes sense, let me just confirm with the issuer, Bank Z. *goes off to call Mister Y from Bank Z*

Ok Mister W unfortunately the issuer seems to have traded that cheque to another Bank, Bank P who then sold it onto Bank K and after then the paper trail seems to have been misplaced *looks rather worried and perplexed*

Very well then, *looks annoyed* if you would just be kind enough to cash the Future I bought and chase it up with Bank K I’ll be out of your hair.

No I’m afraid you don’t understand Mister W, we can’t cash that cheque because it appears to possess no value. The value was decided by the Past Derivative but the Future suddenly embarked upon another course and it appears the cheque you now possess is worthless.

Mister W storms off in search of his missing five trillion of non existent funds.
Well unfortunately the funds never existed so once the banks realised they’d been trading on non existent wealth the resultant predicament is the global financial crisis where we are now. The folly of it is the boom we came out of was a fraud. The money was fake, but for some reason we have disconnect because we seem to believe the recession isn’t. But if the recession is based on false economy I fail to see why the recession can’t be viewed with the same logic. We are in recession because the future was sold at too high a price and now we have to wait for the future to catch up to the past. Now if we sold the recession to the future and traded it for the past we should come out even.

Make sense?