It is - just - conceivably possible that when Ben Bernanke, head of the US Federal Reserve, and Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, are considering altering monetary policy, that when they need expert advice my name is not the first that they look up in their Rolodexes. Much to their loss, naturally.
For example, other so-called economic experts to whom they might turn, seem united in the opinion that interest rates should be slashed to boost the economy (as, in fact, Merv, as I know him, has just done by a quarter of one per cent) both here and in the United States as we face going into a recession (at best), or depression (just you wait. 'Entrenching stability'? Pshaw).
Now it's true, that were one to inspect the state of my finances, if such a grandiose term is not rather overstating the case for such a paltry subject, it might be thought that Ben and Mervyn were not completely in the wrong for not having me at the apex of their list of advisors, although I don't owe any money and have a tiny amount of savings, so as far as I'm concerned interest rates can happily go as high as they like. Bring back the ERM and rates of fifteen percent , I say (still, ERM? Ultimate example of political fantasy over economic reality, perhaps). After all, weren't our forebears taught that Saving was Good, which high interest rates encourage, and Borrowing Bad, which low rates encourage, and I don't suppose the rules of economics change however many loans you make to US trailer park trash with no income, a prison record, and county court judgements against, which you then palm off to the (in my case) suckers at the HSBC.
But notwithstanding my selfish interest in high interest rates, when both the government and the public have been on a ten-year debt binge fuelled by absurdly low interest rates, is not cutting them again now rather like offering a drunk who has been on a ten-year bender on cheap alcohol a hair of the dog in order to stave off the inevitable crushing hangover that is coming their way? You know it's coming (all that lovely dosh is going to have to be paid back eventually, you know), all you can do is defer it, and the more you defer it, the worse it's going to be.
And, oddly, even our very own national charlatan Brown recently boasted, to reassure a fretful public, that a recent small drop in house prices was nothing when compared to the 300 per cent or so they had risen when he was Chancellor. Yet I thought this was the fiscally responsible Brown, who thought inflation was a Bad Thing? Why is a bubble in house prices any more socially useful than a bubble in the rise of prices of, to make up two hypothetical examples, tulip bulbs or South Sea stock? Whatever that might be. Some sort of gravy ingredient, presumably.