Mae, Mac and the fading magic of minus one!

Minus one was a magical invention! Mystical even Majestic and certainly magnificently beneficial. It allowed us to eat three apples when our present yield had been only two. Of course, next harvest, when the twelve we usually anticipated actually arrived only allowed us to eat eleven caused it to be viewed in not such a charitable light. Hence the danger signs! BUT! Where did the possibilities of minus one end? Minus infinity to any rational thinking, common sense person (by definition therefore - not an economist) had to be an impossibility. Yet we have passed in recent years from minus millions to minus hundreds of millions to minus billions to minus hundreds of billions! In September 2008, we have finally set a temporary bar, which according to my blog last February which predicted the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac then seemed set at 6 trillion. The US Government and Treasury Department have this weekend finally bit the bullet and decreed that minus 6 trillion (on last February's figures) is an impossibility! Manipulators of the dark arts of economics have always known that minus one is a convenience based on strong governance. Admitting that minus six trillion is the limit will give the world unconsidered problems! If the UK Government was tomorrow minus one at its head - things might improve! BUT Gordon Brown, an Historian as I understand things - does not understand minus one!