Ponzi-Scheme-U-Like

Oh dear.

When Badger Darling's puppet master, Toad Gordo, saw those TV pictures of all those Labour voters queueing up outside branches of Northern Rock to kick his "golden economic miracle" in the teeth, the response was unprecedented. The taxpayers of Great Britain have now been lined up to stand behind every stupid risky decision taken by the pampered financial elites of the City of London, for the rest of time. Or at least until the Pound Sterling eventually collapses.

Trebles all round boys, and don't forget to take out your usual whopping Christmas bonuses (and thanks for the 40% tax on them too!).

With HMG now placing its taxpaying serfs into this backstop role, expect even more really stupid investment decisions over the next few years, and many more Northern Rock style incidents. No doubt it will all be blamed on capitalism, when once again it is all really down to socialism, or should I say the man behind the green curtain, Toad Gordo.

And it gets worse on the other the side of the Atlantic too. All you'll hear from the elites of Wall Street are the words, "sensible", "balanced", and "pragmatic", when describing the Fed's decision to print even more oomplahs of paper dollars, with its 50 basis point interest rate cut, yesterday. But then these financial elites are facing bonus season, and those yachts and Ferraris are calling.

Just think about it for a moment. What do you do if your paper currency is going down the toilet, becoming more worthless by the hour, the Chinese are dumping your treasury bonds, and any remaining value your paper scrip has is being wasted on idiotic programmes such as the sub-prime mortgage market, because the US and UK governments have made it plain that they will cover all losses with guns placed to the heads of their taxpayers? Yes, that's right; you print even more of the smeggers!

Welcome to Wonderland. The Mad Hatter will be along in a minute, when he's finished chairing the Open Market Operation committee meeting at the Bank of England.

Maturin advice? Buy gold, while you can still get it with this paper rubbish we mistakenly call money, or at least gold stocks. Because all of these paper currencies are going down. They have a few years left in them yet, but it is only a matter of time. How long is debatable. The Soviets managed to keep the paper rouble going for decades. But when the men with guns start insisting upon legal tender laws, and actually have to bring the guns out to enforce them, we will know we are in the end game. Brown's decision to permanently place the UK taxpayer behind the UK's banks may be the first intimation of this.

What would be really funny, of course, is if Putin decided to create a gold rouble to really sock it to the dollar and the pound. But whatever you do, or Putin does, get out of paper and get into real values. Forget "sensible", "balanced", and "pragmatic". Yesterday marked the high-point of a very tall and a very steep rollercoaster. We are about to find out the meaning of the phrase white-knuckle ride. You have been warned.