Well - all I am really saying is that we must not blunder into what could be cataclysmic economic change thinking that everything we know is right, fixed, unchangeable.

We have got to be prepared to throw out some sacred cows if it comes to it. The currency we understand, as a floating instrument unbacked by any specie whatever, has been around for twenty five years at most. The pension system fifty. The deficit financing system a couple of hundred.

A blink of an eye in global terms. And global crunches have made even those systems change. Stern seems to be suggesting, by all reports, that this will be a global crunch to challenge them all (which is what people like Lietaer have been saying for a decade).

If we all fry because some bugger says here's no more money" which is merely a human construct that serves a particular purpose at a particular time, it will have been a triumph of theory over sense."