Seems we don't look for the weather forecast anymore while we rub the sleep out of our eyes.

People talk about "the market" as though it's some kind of beast living in a cave that has to be constantly fed with sacrifices, (us) or it will leave the cave and devour the world.

So it seems like a good time to remind ourselves of just what the markets are. When you look under the rock, what crawls out? The same red braced spivs that brought us the mis-selling of endowments, Payment Protection Insurance, insurance policies not worth a damn, record interest rates at a time when bank rate has never been lower, banking crisis mark 1 and shortly banking crisis mark 2.

(These same people have now formed companies to get you out of the trouble caused by, you've guessed it, the mis-selling of endowments, Payment Protection Insurance, insurance policies not worth a damn and debt from over sold loans, credit cards tec.)

To you and I money is something to buy things with, to them it's merely casino chips for speculating with. There are thousands of individuals all over the world, but mainy in London, moving worthless bits of paper around, betting on currencies and often manipulating the outcome to suit themselves. And what they do can throw you and I out of work.

I've bitched about the ludicrous deference shown for the royals and celebs etc, but to see the lives of ordinary people placed in turmoil because of a bunch of scurrillous chancers known as "the markets" is mind blowing. How have we arrived at a situation where leaders get congratulated by the "markets" for decimating their own citizens lives? Why don't we just shut the fuckers down?