I read an interesting piece the other day by Frank Furedi about how the unreal economy has come to outstrip the real economy, whilst the two have become so intertwined as to make any attempt at retrospective regulation very fraught indeed. As I've mentioned before, globally the 'unreal' economy had got to a point where it was worth almost twice the real economy...but in Iceland, described by Furedi as a country which has transformed itself into "a sub-sub-sub-prime hedge fund" the banking and financial services sector had assets valued at NINE times its annual GDP of £6.8billion. As with Northern Rock last year bankruptcy was surely always waiting at the end of the cycle.
It's ironic that Coutts, 'the Queen's bank' is now 60% owned by UK taxpayers. Think of all those high net worth individuals and their socialised assets!
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