The Emperor's New Clothes

We all know the old joke. 'if all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion'

For all the sophisticated models and academic prowess, isn't it really a matter of the Emperors New Clothes? We keep whizzing money around the system at faster and faster rates to hide the fact that there isn't enough. Provided nobody says anything, all is well! But then someone has the audacity to point and say 'not enough'. Then everybody shamefacedly grabs the money that happened to be in their hand and look miserable. At the same time, the wise economists who were yesterday laughing all the way to the bank now utter the dreaded 'r' word. It's the adult version of pass the parcel. Pass the debt. Round and round it goes, faster and faster. Much jolity had by all. Until the music stops. Iceland, you've got the debt, you must pay all of us now. 'Won't, can't , shan't'. Right, you're not in our euro party any more. Not going to buy frozen veg from you now. Let's play again. Oh, Greece, you seem to have it. Naughty boy. Pay up, sack your workers, pay your way. Otherwise those nice Italians might have to pay. And they can't and then were will we be?

It seems like we are all in debt. We owe the bank for our mortgage, the bank owes me for the money we tax-payers gave to the government to pay the CEO's their 49% pay increase. The government owes the European bank in order to pay for Greece's debt. The European bank owes China money to cover the cost of Italy's debt. China isn't really part of the system so nobody knows who it owes money to, meanwhile, the US's credit rating has slipped because of it's enormous debts....

Now I may not be an economist, but one thing seems clear to me. We can't all be in debt. Somebody somewhere must actually be the one to whom we owe something. The balance sheet of the world economy cannot be negative - the assets and liabilities cannot be worse than zero! Unless there really are aliens to whom the earth is in debt, the issue ultimately is not of overall debt, but of distribution.

And in the meantime, the psychology of it all means only one thing. The rich get richer - although there are fewer of them, and the poor get more widespread and poorer. And as we all feel the anxiety rise, generosity is the first casualty. Most Britons in a recent survey argued that foreign aid should be cut.

The blinkers move. Instead of being blind to our own financial profligacy, we become blind to the appalling injustice of a world in which people die because they have no clean water, because we are innoculated and they are not.

I'm reminded that God 'owns the sheep on a thousand hills' that it is him from whom our help and security comes. Shall we be counter-cultural and trust, not in the size of the European bail-out, not in the wisdom of the world's economists, but in him? And out of that genuine security, can we become a channel of God's love and blessing to others, opening our hands, our homes, our resources to generously give to those who will otherwise have nothing?

Because there is one indebtedness that we cannot avoid. The debt we owe to God for our being, for our salvation.

"Father, forgive our debts as we forgive others"