Your money is our money; our money is our money

Hi, my name's Bob. People back home call me Off-Shore Bob - for reasons that'll  never be obvious, ha-ha. And today I want to talk to you about this awesome phenomenon we call globalisation.

Globalisation, as you folks will surely know by now, has brought the entire world to our doorstep. It's brought wonderful gadgets, like computers from China, through which you guys have been able to manage and maintain your addiction to social networking sites, to computer games, to cyber-bullying, and of course to drugs, politics and pornography. It has brought you mobile android technology - also from China - which has given every man woman and child in the West the right and the freedom to send, for the most part, pointless texts, thereby ridding us of the urge to perpetuate that old dinosaur we once called the "vocal and personal interactive contact medium".

But the greatest thing globalisation has brought us is money, cheap and easy money and the freedom to gamble all that money away on anything from "liars loans" to high-risk special purpose investment vehicles (That's quite a mouthful, ain't it?)

And how has this been made possible? I'll tell you how. Solely and quite uniquely through the ingenuity of the global investment banking community. Do I hear you all laughing? Perhaps I do. Are you all thinking: Hey wait a minute, these guys brought the Western economies to their knees in late Spring 2008?And these guys made even more millions out of quantitative easing, whilst everyone else was suffering, watching their savings diluted because their pounds and dollars became less valuable. And these guys paid themselves huge bonuses whilst everyone else starved. Yes, I've heard all the old arguments, the old chestnuts, if you like.

But, hello, girls and boys? Who exactly is it who's gonna get you out of this mess? Who's gonna re-inflate that bubble, I mean, economy? Who's gonna provide the liquidity that'll get the world back on its feet? Well, some jokers might say: Not bankers, because they haven't changed one bit and they'll simply carry on doing what they did before - first restricting their lending, later pumping up a fake recovery and then vamoosing once more with their ill-gotten gains. But I say that's bull. Where would you all be without us? You might hate us, but you'll need us one day. Money brings and always has brought recovery. It's simply the lack of money that screws everything up - as we saw in 2008. And it's only a globalised money supply that will get us back to those heady days of the late nineties and the noughties, when you could buy your houses and your cars and your holidays and live a grand old life.

And I say it's lucky some of us bankers did in fact vamoose and squirrel away our money in off-shore bank accounts. Because it is we who now live to fight another day. We can return like conquering heroes with our off-shore capital, the better to re-invigorate and revitalize your stale old economies.

And so, I end on this note: The secret to globalisation is ensuring guys like us with our off-shore accounts are permitted to maintain a clear divide between what is globally available and what is personally inaccessible. Global money supply should not, should never mean our money is available - hey, not unless we want it to be. We're gonna need that money some day to help you guys out. Look at the all those fine gentlemen who ran Lehman Brothers. You might not like them much, cos of the part they played in the global meltdown. But only because they squirreled away their hundreds of millions when that noble US institution went down, can they return like kings to help you guys now you're in trouble. Think of it as like paying something back to society.

And what shall we call this wondrous phenomenon that allows your money to be our money and our money to be our money. Well, I'd like to call it Off-Shore Globalisation. Yep, that's a quite a name to conjure with, boys and girls, ain't it? It's been a round for a while now, and it ain't going away - you have my guarantee on that. And, you know what?  It's gonna bring you guys salvation. Because, Off-Shore Globalisation really is quite a card to play. In fact, it's just a shame it wasn't around back in the time of Jesus Christ. Then he couldn't have thrown us kindly money-lenders outta the temple. Or else, if he had, we'd have just gone away to build our own temple. Maybe we have.

Anyway, good luck with your economies, suckers. See you round...

Ciao, Off-Shore Bob x