Broke

Recent media reports suggest that many Poles are leaving the UK and Ireland and returning home to Poland. Apparently the Polish economy continues to grow - the state maintained strong regulation on Polish banks - while ours goes down the proverbial drain. Sinking ships, anyone?

The investment arms of major banks have racked up so many losses that they have been wholly or partly nationalised; major retailers are going bust, for example Woolworths, with well over 20,000 job losses; over 100,000 people per month are losing their jobs; and the IMF has just reported that the UK economy is shrinking at the fastest rate of any Western nation, the biggest contraction since WWII. And why? Because financial services make up a larger proportion of the UK economy than any other country. So, the entire economy is collapsing at a rapid rate, and the public sector is propping it up more than ever. All sorts of forecasts about unemployment are coming out, the latest being 3.4 million by the end of the year. That would be more people unemployed than in the darkest days of Thatcherite economic reform.

Still, it could be worse...like Ireland. The joke in Ireland goes like this: 'What's the difference between Ireland and Iceland? One letter and about 6 months'. Their banks are broke, house prices are collapsing, and the EU hasn't come to the rescue. So much for the Celtic Tiger.

It's all a debacle, really. But my prediction is that very little will change in the long run. At least Gordon Brown is talking about a new international agreement on financial regulation, but apparently this hasn't even come up in the US. And the City continues to pay out bonuses to bankers even as they beg the Treasury to bail them out with taxpayers' funds.

It's times like this that being a public servant is a big advantage.