The rights to sovereign ownership

As the continual threat of financial collapse burrows itself into the history of the beginning of the twenty-first century, more and more nations are succumbing to their own inability to cope with the huge monetary pressures and strain.

As the financial doom and gloom spreads from one continent to the next, it seems each nation’s initial response is just as unpredictable as the very idea that they’re in billions of dollars of debt to an array of demanding forces. Greece panicked somewhat, Britain shifted nervously in its seat, Germany pointed at Greece, France hid behind Germany and Italy just said no. All of that left the US scratching its head, China laughing on and Australia looking nervously over its shoulder.

What is particularly striking about the way each nation has coped with financial meltdown as the situations have rumbled on, is the fractured nature with which some politicians and many commentators have tried to conceptualise the mounting debt.

At one point, it seemed that each nation was churning through a different economic indicator every week, in desperation to find a starting point from which to rectify the problem. So far and depending on who you speak to, the most important figure to consider is a country’s purchasing parity power, its inflation rate, its unemployment rate, its GDP, or its GNP. Just before he went, one of Silvio Berlusconi’s top brass urged him to consider the current maturation rates of his 2021 bonds and their general performance. Far be it to suggest that the possibility of having to assess the sheer volume of market indicators drove Berlusconi to wilfully step down, but it doesn’t seem that farfetched to consider that it might have helped.

Although think tanks and government agencies logically put many forward, it would seem that these different indicators are selected and suggested by a variety of sources, with a complete wealth of different interests.

As the private sector gets beomes more and more involved in each nation’s debt management and liquidity issues, a variety of different interests get thrown into the mix, leaving war∞weary politicians chasing different barometers on an open market. As the general populace struggles to come to terms with the ever∞rising debt figures and perpetually accumulating indicators, the idea of keeping faith with those in power becomes less and less attractive.

As such, it’s difficult to picture a situation in which constantly moving goal posts won’t come back to haunt someone. Yet few have asked the question, how benefits from using more than one economic indicator to guage national accounts?

During his time in office in the 1970s, British prime minister Harold Wilson was constantly harangued for his inability to keep the balance of payments under control. By sticking to a single, non-negotiable point of departure and relating it to other economic factors, the UK had a fairly good idea of how things were progressing and how much pressure should be placed on the man at the reins. Transparent, honest, but it led to Wilson’s downfall.

Perhaps by muddying the issue those in power are protecting themselves, both from industry backers representing substantial investment, and voters. Inevitably, though, those big figures will fester, whether in the public eye or not.