Can do better
WE LIVE on an island, said Aneurin Bevan, made of coal and surrounded by fish, so it must have taken an organising genius to create a shortage both of fish and of coal. The organising geniuses in Moscow have gone further. They have enabled the world's largest oil producer and the gran- ary of Europe to expect a winter without enough food or fuel. I look on the bright side: it really cannot be difficult to make this economy work better. Ours did, in the years after Bevan's quip. It finally re- sponded, not to greater genius, but to less organisation. Moscow this week was still shying away from such a shocking thought. 'We must avoid any shock therapy', Ivan Silayev said — and put his hand out for international credit. The most open- handed lender will first want to know who his debtor is. Yugoslavia's debt is now at a slight premium to wallpaper, which goes to show that when a federation breaks up, none of the component states want to take the debt with them. We shall see whether monetary union survives. Some republics might be better off without it. (Texas, I have long thought, should declare monet- ary independence from the US dollar, and join Opec.)
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