Rollerworld

"The game was invented to demonstrate the futility of individual effort."
--Mr Bartholomew (Rollerball)

Interesting article on the 'Ville this am regarding movements toward nationalizing consumer credit in the UK. Essentially, banks in the UK will be able to submit any form of consumer credit to the BOE as collateral for liquidity loans (liquidity loans being a code word for free money to the banks).

This is one approach for doing an 'end around' a broken credit system. In this set-up, banks have much lower (perhaps even no) risk of loss from bad loan-making, thus they're more likely to pyramid credit created out of thin air by central banks to liquify the monetary system. Banks become middle men for central banks handing money directly to the people. One expression of Helicopter Ben's famed 'chopper drop' approach.

Of course, the assumption is that there will be ample quantities of consumers willing to borrow funds from lenders...an assumption that may be tenuous (see Japan).

I also like the larger message of this piece. The author shares that he tries to conjure up the wildest policymaker schemes imaginable in order to be a step or two ahead of reality when those seemingly fictitious dreams become reality.

If you want to keep up with socioeconomic economic reality, then you better have a wild imagination.