Big short is great entertainment, as is Margin Call, and at times, equal parts sobering and fascinating. However that’s all it is, entertainment, which although does a good job of layman’s terming (no pun intended) and providing context to your average Brian it’s still a bit of Hollywood fluff.

Inside Job is an actual documentary on the subject and is almost as punchy due to being grounded in fact as another great documentary about the US prison system/war on drugs (highly recommended, created by David Simon, the wire) ‘The house I live in’.

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

Ah good one but I'm not self employed. I'm paye and work for a maintenance firm. 7 guys are already fuloughed so down the line who knows. Im classed as a key worker due to working in health and residential properties. Not ideal for my mob but got to keep the wheels turning. Distance is not only practiced when sleeping with the enemy.

On 9am on LBC they’re asking are we doing the right thing, following a Times article saying what Stirling is saying.

COYP

Not often I agree with you. David Buik who’s a well respected chap from the city and often speaks in front of the 24 hour news cameras said at 8.30am this can’t go on forever but neither can you just do nothing and let this happen. Therefore we need to all follow the rules of this lockdown because otherwise the people flouting it are damaging the futures of young people. Obviously the irony will be lost on the parents and teenagers flouting it although there will be lots that have little future. Not your middle class teenagers. Those on the estates for various reasons.

The one glimmer of light he said is that our banking system is in better shape than Europe’s. But we really are in for real trouble, make no mistake. About 14 consecutive months of falling unemployment in the US followed by one month of however many millions and I think 14% unemployment. The number of universal credit applications in Britain is also very alarming.

But you will see tw@ts out in the summer tomorrow.

The teenagers shopping and working in the supermarkets just brush past you without a thought.

I just love the people who slate the government and say they should’ve had a lockdown in December and January. Yeah right. Go and lock yourself away regardless.

Edited by Rudi Hedman (04 Apr 2020 9.40am)

COYP

Is the correct reply!

Think you're being a bit too dismissive of it Stirling. Actually, I think we've got to hope that they're right as if we've all got to "pay for it" through taxation afterwards, with the huge numbers that will be unemployed, this country and most of the developed world will be bankrupt (not notionally, as now, but actually as in defaulting on National Debt).

If austerity is re-imposed there'll be massive social unrest. The seeds of discontent are already well and truly sown across the UK and Europe, young versus old, haves versus have nots, wealthy versus not so wealthy, and were evident throughout Brexit, the French riots, Hong Kong (for another reason), Italy and Germany too to some extent.

With the above factors and the need to blame someone for it all, when it's over in a way it's just beginning. At the moment everyone's holed up in their homes. When we're allowed out the repercussions will begin.

It may not reach Civil war, but it may do, at least in the US, possibly here and across mainland Europe. And China and Russia will be watching on (not interfering, of course).

The depths of the oncoming Depression could be as bad as 1929. And that period ultimately came to an end and the world was able to press the reset button, only after the events that happened just ten years afterwards.

So, in a nutshell, I hope the MMT advocates are right because we can all just write this debt mountain off, for now.

Living down here does have some advantages. At least you can see them cry.