BBC Radio 4: Money isn’t real!

The comedy show on BBC Radio 4  on 23rd August on the question “Where did all the money go?” assisted by Gillian Tett and Max Keiser is very well worth a listen. They do eventually get to the point!

LISTEN HERE

The best part – from 24:00 min!

Where did all the money go?
– I know… but it’s gonna freak you out! .

Get on with it… Where did all the money go?
– Nowhere! Because it wasn’t there in the first place! …It’s not real!

Of course money is real, we’ve got it in our pockets… it has Queen’s face all over it! Can it get any more real than that? 
– You mean cash – notes and coins – but only about 3% of all money in the economy is real money! The rest is completely made up. 

No, no, please don’t say that… How can it be made up?
– Well, right, now new money must have come into the system in the form of loans made by banks, right?

It’s not really new money, is it? I’m not Adam Smith, but surely the banks have the money to lend you because other people have invested their money in the bank.
– That’s how we tend to think of it. But actually if you’ve got a £1000 in your bank account and the same bank now decides to lend me £1000, does the £1000 disappear from your account?

Well, no, of course not.
– But it appears on mine. So, whose account does it come out of?

Well, no-ones…
– Right. So where does it come from?

No, don’t say it again… surely they can’t just…
– Yes. They just make it up! Exactly, they just type numbers in a computer – BING: there’s the money – deposited in your account.

– Money isn’t real!

I can’t help noticing that the audience seems to be fine with it! Money isn’t real!

Rory Bremner’s new weekly satirical comedy takes one big contemporary question each week and attempts to answer it.

Rory’s mantra is that it’s as important to make sense out of things as it is to make fun of them. He believes only then will people laugh at the truth. This deconstructed “quiz” has only one question each week, because that question is so big, there’s no time for anything else.