Bitcoin Marches On

Nobody really knows what 'Bitcoin' is, or what damage it can do to the global economy. Some people know [but do not tell] who invented this 'virtual' pseudo-currency; several dozen people and firms have made money from trading in it, and it is rumoured that some people and firms have played in the market and lost.

No government has responsibility for bitcoin; but several governments could find themselves dealing with a crisis which arose from reckless or careless trading in this medium to the extent that it impinged badly on their national economy. It would be unconscionable if any government required its taxpayers to assist any firms or persons who found themselves in a bitcoin crisis; and it would be politically disastrous if any government thereby plunged its citizens into a decade of reduced living standards as the British government did with the bale-out of the banks in 2008.

There have been plenty of warnings from well-known market players, to the effect that this totally unregulated free-enterprise market has no substance and can thus cause major disruption in any economy that allows assets designated in this nonexistent medium to take a prominent place in anybody's asset register.

Despite this, and despite asserting even a few days ago that they would never allow their platform to be used for bitcoin-denominated trades, the CME [formerly known as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange] has announced that bitcoin will be allowed in trades passing through their books. It is immaterial that this is experimental, and is envisaged only ever to be a small sideline in the market. The big point is that one of the world's largest and most important exchanges has legitimated this bastard child of greed.

Gordon Brown's memoirs are being marketed, for a big launch next week. He would not have wished it, but the commentariat will concentrate primarily on his failure to develop a mature prime ministerial personality [with the resultant tantrums and failures] and on his success - with Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the day - in 'saving' the world banking system; at the long-term cost of the British people. In extracts that have been released already, Brown makes it clear that he deplores how completely his successors [the Tory-Lib coalition, the Cameron government and now the May regime] have totally failed to reform and rebuild the banking system so that it has the clarity of structure, the strength of reserves, and the separation of banking from wholesale gambling that were shown by the crisis to be absolutely necessary.

The Bank of England has warned that some 75,000 City jobs will migrate to Europe unless Britain gets a Brexit deal that keeps the country within the European Economic Area: but that is just the start of the catastrophe that could be played out if the bonkers Brexiteers ally with the 'free markets' lobby of wholesale gamblers in making the claim that any losses from legitimate banking and financial trading within the EU context can be replaced by growth in 'virtual' finance and betting.

Media muckrakers have found that Jacob Rees-Mogg was a notably unsuccessful fund manager in the period when Gordon Brown was at the apogee of his power, before the 2008 market failure. He is not a believable prophet of supposed good times that can follow from a 'hard Brexit'; nor is any other of the vociferous minority who are agitating for Britain to be plunged at the deep end of the shark-infested global market: if any of those buffoons comes out as an advocate of bitcoin, that will be proof positive of their intellectual limitations and perversity.