Memex 1.1

From a letter to Mervyn King from Gordon Brown (as imagined by my colleague, William Keegan).

…The great thing about the tripartite system of financial regulation (I know I shouldn’t say this!) is that everyone blames everyone else and the public gets confused. I agree with you that our strategy must be to learn the lessons and try harder.

Nevertheless, before all this hit us for six, you were rightly seen as a highly successful chairman of the monetary policy committee. I also note that while I thought balance-of-payments and sterling crises were things of the past, you persistently warned that the economy needed ‘rebalancing’ and that the exchange rate was too high.

Well, the balance-of-payments figures for the third quarter were horrendous. We may now be on the verge of a full-scale sterling crisis. I need you to handle this, Mr Governor, and many other little local difficulties. Please stay. All is forgiven.

This morning’s Observer column…

That’s the good news. The bad news is that spam will continue to increase and we may finally discover what the Storm ‘botnet’ – the colossal network of compromised Windows machines someone has been covertly building over the past year – is for. My hunch is that the net is headed for its own version of 9/11. So enjoy it while it lasts. Happy New Year…