The Lloyds guarantee and Zen

While my first reaction at this headline (£250bn Lloyds asset deal on cards) was to wonder how on earth Lloyds had managed to issue £250bn of credit card lending, my more sober response is relief.

Perhaps I'm just gradually getting catatonic, but every new announcement feels somehow reassuring, like a further small slip towards the end game we all know is coming. Like we're suspended from a frayed rope and every fibre that breaks brings us closer to the inevitable. Or more positively, we've scored one more item off the todo list before we can go home for the weekend. No matter whether the destination is good or bad, tension is released because we know what's going to happen.

It doesn't feel so much like releasing ourselves into the embrace of an all-encompassing, caring government; nor even like bleeding numbly into a warm bath; more like our character in Street Fighter has lost most of its life points and it's going to be reset when we lose the game. Monetary actions just feel that easy. My main concern is whether we need to recompile all our software with 64-bit integers when everyone's account balance goes over £2,147,483,648.

Maybe this sounds sarcastic but it's not really. In this situation I think there's only one place we can realistically end up, and that's where we're going. There's no point blaming the government, or the bankers, or the Chinese or the Americans for it. Just submerge yourself, and decide whether to call it resignation, acceptance, serenity or nirvana.

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