A Time of Magic

The vast majority of people assume that they can pop down to their bank and lift their cash out at any time: not so.

Whilst this will work in the normal run of events, the actual amount of cash that the banks hold as a proportion of their total assets is around 3% in the UK according to the Bank of England. Soooo, if more than 3% of the customers decide to lift their cash, they quite quickly find that they can’t.

Unless, of course, there’s a run on the bank in which case the Bank of England will usually (not always!) provide the additional cash required as they’re obviously none too keen on getting a reputation for UK banks of not being able to meet their obligations.

This has been seen in action this week with the Northern Rock. Going by the queues seen every day, that 3% of cash has long since been used up so, in practical terms, they can’t repay any more out of their own reserves and are now existing solely on the good favour of the Bank of England.

The only “banks” where this liquidity ratio doesn’t matter are the central banks who can simply print more cash if need be. Unfortunately, most countries don’t let you have an account directly with the central bank. However, in the UK National Savings are effectively Bank of England accounts in all but name ie 100% security.

It’s call the the Pont du Gard but actually the bridge isn’t what you should be going to see as that’s merely an abomination that was erected in the 1700s. Were someone to have proposed it today, the objections would come from all directions.

The bridge is covered with graffiti from the 1700s to the 1800s yet today the park rangers would be round pretty promptly if you took out a hammer and chisel and made a start on inscribing your name. Yet, that’s exactly what those in the 1700s did. They certainly didn’t make the inscriptions with a penknife as most people would do today. Given the depth of them many were far from ten minute jobs.

However, if you think about it, those who would scrape their name on the bridge today would be marking what would be considered historical inscriptions in a few hundred years time.

Of course, if you went back even further, would the aqueduct itself have been granted planning permission under the regulations that exist today? Probably not, as you’d get lots of objections about it ruining a lovely historic river setting.

It’s odd how we change how we look at things once they become “historic”, isn’t it?

One sad indication that it is very much the same is the barometer of press freedom over at Reporters Sans Frontiers which lists the depressing totals of 131 journalists imprisoned and 66 cyberdissidents.

In some senses, that’s an encouraging sign in that it highlights that blogging is coming of age. After all, if it weren’t influential, who’d bother to lock up a blogger?

It’s also quite frightening. After all, many of us in democratic societies wouldn’t think twice about criticising the government. How many times have you complained about high taxes? That could easily count as a dissident view. Many of those with blogs that touch on politics will have written detailed critiques on various aspects of the governance of their country which is definitely dissident. Indeed, it’s expected that democratic governments attract criticism and calls for their downfall.

Not so in China. There Guo Qizhen was jailed for just that kind of thing.

So, just as real journalists support freedom of expression so too should us bloggers make a point of doing it whenever we can.