Allow me to take you this morning on short trip to never-never.
Lately, your daily routine has been getting the best of you. Rising at dawn, going to work at rush hour, having to deal with jealous colleagues, facing an unreasonable boss, returning home at rush hour, only to repeat it all the next day. You feel psychologically drained and physically exhausted. Sometimes, at work, you even take your eyes off the computer screen and momentarily let them wander into the landscape outside, only to feel immediately guilty for having afforded yourself the luxury of daydreaming. In that fleeting instant, you wish it could all be different. But how? You can't just quit your job. How would you manage?
Suddenly, as you steal another passing moment from your boss in order to glance outside your prison cell, this time without guilt, you realise that, on account of a public holiday, you could have yourself a very nice long weekend.. Thank God for religion! Where would we be without it? At first, you feel a surge of delight, similar to the one you experience every time you consume a whole slab of chocolate. Then reality sets in and you come back to earth. The truth is that you are bit short of cash and it's no fun spending a weekend alone. This time you go back to facing the computer screen with anger, as if it was the sole cause of your misfortunes.
That evening, at home, you mull your options. Of course, you could stay at home and relax. After all, a man's home is his castle, but your minute apartment feels more like the dungeon than the castle itself. You quickly discard the idea. How could you even have entertained it! It is at that point that you remember that you have a gold credit card and a bosom friend that, for ages now, you have been wanting to get to know better, but who has, ever so slyly, in a very feminine way, always escaped your pedestrian approaches. You pick up your cell phone and shoot from the hip. How would she like to spend a long weekend in the Middle East? Unsurprisingly, she says yes. You have finally risen to her expectations.
Your business class flight turns out to be impeccable, and your seven star hotel is straight out of Arabian fiction. The food is superb and your companion, although not very intelligent, reveals herself to be most stimulating. In fact, unimaginably so. You are on top of the world and start to feel as if your boss has finally begun to work for you. So much so that you could even become unreasonable towards him and treat him like the worm he is. To show how appreciative you are, you brandish your gold credit card ferociously and buy your female friend a pair of diamond earrings and an exotic outfit that will serve as souvenir of the time spent in never-land.
Alas, the flight back is a bit bumpy, and you companion becomes even less talkative, which is unhelpful. At the airport, as you separate, she has that same far-away look she had the day that you met her for the first time. You feel as if you were just the magic carpet that enabled her to fulfil a dream that perhaps she would have never achieved. You shrug it off and catch a taxi home.
Having reached your dungeon, you unpack your belongings and begin to add up the credit card slips. For the first time, you start to see real stars. Many more than those the hotel in the Middle East sported. How on earth are you going to pay for all this? Well, you have another credit card that could save you for a while, but you will definitely have to take a second mortgage on your apartment. You are now in deep financial trouble.
On Monday, as you walk into the office, you greet your boss sheepishly. You dare not take your eyes off the computer screen. The landscape outside does not interest you one iota. You are back to reality. Routine is your world.
That's what credit is about. It creates an illusion of wealth and power. Yet, it is short-lived. And, when you come down to earth, pain awaits you. Mercilessly.
I leave you to transpose my fairy tale to the world of macro economics.
