Always look on the bright side of life.

Christmas is coming and the rats are getting fat

Please put a penny in the banker’s hat.

If you haven’t got a penny, $700 billion will do

If you haven’t got that, to hell with you!

Is it all doom and gloom? Is it the end of the world as we know it? Yes, it is, but don’t panic because behind every bank is a tax payer. So cheer up, things will be changing but there are ways to look at the entire demise of the capitalist West by looking at the advantages.

First of course, if you still have money in stocks and shares get it out, and invest the money in something tangible. Perhaps a farm in Zimbabwe, for example. If you have money in a bank, do what some experts recommend. Withdraw the lot and convert it into things that will very soon become valuable, such as food. Fill your loft with thousands of tins of sardines. They are very good for you and seem to last for ever. Whatever you do don’t tell anyone in case a few years down the road, when the food riots start, the looters will be breaking down your door.

You have to look at the irony and get a little smile out of it. Quite a few people woke up in the United Kingdom today to find out, that with the nationalisation of the mortgage bank Bradford and Bingley (to be renamed Bingo and Bongo), they are effectively borrowing money from themselves! As a tax payer they now own part of the bank. As a mortgage payer they are now moving their wages from one account to another. So why bother! Simply stop paying the mortgage or tax!

Don’t worry about this. Worse case scenario is going bankrupt. But this could be good news. In England and Wales the law states –

If you were made bankrupt on or after 1 April 2004: Then you will be automatically discharged from your bankruptcy after a maximum of 12 months.

Just one year sleeping under a bus shelter, and then your free to apply for more debt. Spend the time writing your memoirs. Titles such as From Cocaine and Champagne Kid, to Bum on the Run: my life as a successful stockbroker. It must be something really catchy.

Next year you will be able to look forward to the new James Bond film. Unlike the latest one, Quantum of Solace, no multi-million dollar corporations will be able to sponsor it, because they are all bust. Instead, the whole thing will be financed by the Swedish giant Pirate Bay, who will offer it for free to download.

Work on the script is already in process and I have managed to obtain a first draft, tentatively titled – Busted Bastard Banks.

Bond is informed by ‘M’ that unfortunately his pension fund is worth zilch as the government invested it in dodgy hedge-fonds and even though they now own them, they are worthless. There is more bad news. MI6 is to be closed because they conceive that there is no more threat to what was Great Britain by anyone, anymore. In fact, the only person with even a vague interest in the former colonial power house is Robert Mugabe, still chirping away his usual nonsense. As they no longer need Bond he is on his own, and his weapon has been sold for scrap metal.

Bond receives a last present from ‘Q’ who has been forced onto the dole queue. It is a wrist worn sundial which only works at night with the help of a torch.

It doesn’t take long for Bond to find out all his stashed life savings have also been liquidated and now extremely pissed-off, he swears revenge. This time it is yet again very personal.

Bond somehow gets to Botswana where he is taught by the Bushmen to hunt with bow and poison tipped arrows.

He then (somehow), returns and wanders around on a stolen Chinese made bicycle, hunting down destitute stock brokers and bankers living under bus shelters. He introduces himself as ‘Bond, Bankrupt Bond’ and lets rip with his bow and arrow.

His obligatory sidekick, called Wine’o Amy (played by Amy Whinehorse, who also sings the theme song, Cry for my dinner), follows him around moaning a lot and rummages through the rags of the dispatched former money-men, looking for stashed little bags of Class ‘A’ drugs.

In the final scene, Bond and Wine’o christen their love child, 003.5, in a Jewish synagogue with a cameo appearance by Madonna as the body building fairy god-mother.

---

Latest interesting links –

Peter Godwin article.

Day of the Crocodile.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/09/zimbabwe200809?currentPage=1

Dmitry Orlov lecture.

Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259