High Finance

The more that the ‘credit crunch’ continues, the more I realise just how much I don’t understand about finance, and the way it supposedly works. (Although “works” is a pretty loose term for it, in this context)

For example, I simply don’t understand how a country can continue to operate when it has a National Debt of over 10 trillion dollars. I can’t see any world where that makes sense. But maybe it’s just me being simple.

And I don’t understand how local councils can complain on the one hand about their ever-shrinking budgets, and how they’re going to have to make cutbacks to services every year, yet they can also afford to invest millions in an Icelandic bank. (For example, our local council has £12 million there, yet keeps on bitching that it hasn’t got any money, and that services have to be reduced)

I must be simple. I just don’t get how this can be seen as a working system…