Shortage of stock
ON an island almost entirely made of coal and surrounded by fish, Aneurin Bevan said it would take a government of genius to cre- ate a shortage of both fish and coal. Gov- ernments rise to these occasions, though. On this island they have been borrowing money for hundreds of years and have dou- bled the national debt in the current decade. Even so, and without even trying, today's government has created a shortage of stock. Resentfully, the pension funds are paying famine prices and will pass on the pangs of hunger to their pensioners in due course. I recommend patience. Ten years ago, when the Chancellor of the day had got his budget into surplus and was paying money back, City friends of mine com- plained that he was ruining their market. How could London hold up its head as an international financial centre without a proper supply of the host government's stock? Patience was the order of the day then, too. Soon enough we had a Chancel- lor with a genius for borrowing, who provid- ed new stock at the rate of a billion pounds every week. Recent governments have made us importers of coal and, by signing us up to the Common Fisheries Policy, arranged for the shortage of fish to be permanent.
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