Barter and beat the bust
It is no good blaming the Government. And there is really not much point in blaming George Soros. Just like the American banks speculating against the Hong Kong dollar this week, all the money market hoodlums have been doing is work within the system.
You cannot blame them for the system, any more than you can blame American children who shoot their classmates. It is the way the world they live in works. There are heavy-hitters making sure it stays that way, too. What the National Rifle Association is to guns, what the World Trade Organisation is to trade, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to free-floating exchange rates and collapsing economies.
Do not blame the IMF, either. It is just part of the system - and at least it believes it is doing the right thing. In fact, the real culprits were the ancient Lydians. The ancient Chinese had a hand in it, too, but we will come back to them.
Week Ending's research and analysis department has been leafing through the archives. After months of painstaking sifting of facts, we are convinced Asia could have avoided its present difficulties if only the ancient world had not made that fateful decision to give up barter and move to a money economy.
It was the King of Lydia's fault. It was round about 600BC. He was sitting on the balcony of the Spanish-style villa, built for him by Kong, Lo and Au-yeung of Sha Tin architects, in exchange for a junk-load of marble from his quarries in Asia Minor. In the cool of the air-conditioning (a Hittite slave waving a palm frond) he sat, dreamily watching his people exchange pigs for brides and Turkish Delight for the rhubarb powder.
Suddenly, it came to him. Why not use coins instead? After all, was it not insulting to measure a valuable load of pigs by their weight in mere virgins? And what if you happened to want to buy a bolt of Chinese silk from some passing caravan and the camel driver did not fancy the thermostatically controlled kebab grill you were offering in return? But what if you could strike thousands of round metal disks, all of exactly the same silver and gold mixture, all with your own kingly head on them and all considered to be worth one pig, for example, or one kebab fork? Then you could buy one pig's worth of virgins or 2,000 kebab forks worth of silk, without actually having to part with your pig or foist two thousand kebab forks on some unwilling travelling silk-salesman. Your royal fame would be spread far and wide. Foreigners would tremble.