Let’s have an imaginary scenario – just like a game.

Let’s say I am a business. My business is to give insurance. I give insurance for a healthy profit, thank you very much. And, by making a healthy profit, I can award myself huge bonuses. It’s a win-win situation.

I can, almost, decide on any premium I choose because there are only a few of us companies in this ‘game’. I decide that this insurance is very risky – so I make everyone who wants it pay more than they really need to.

Unfortunately, some of the organisations that take on this insurance are not as good as I am. They have found themselves in some sticky situations. They rely on other companies making a profit. Unfortunately, those other companies don’t always do that.

Now, I want the insurance business. But I don’t really want the risk of the other companies underperforming.

It’s a difficult situation. I mean, I want the organisations to keep insuring with me and they’ll only do that whilst the other companies continue to exist. If all the other companies went bust there’d be no need for my insurance. So, I need to keep the other companies in business – even if they have to sack many of their workforce; even if they have to reduce the pay to the workers that are left; make cuts in everything – just to ensure the company can stay in business. I don’t really care at all. It’s just important that the other companies continue to survive.

So, recently, I’ve had a few of the other companies that have been having a few difficulties. Obviously, my premiums to cover the organisations rises and I make more profit. Which is great. But it’s no good if the other companies go to the wall.

So I have come up with a very cunning plan.

Some of my employees, who have all become very rich working for me, have agreed to go and ‘help’ those companies survive as I want. Of course, we need to keep this below the radar as much as we can. So keep it quiet, please. It’s just our little secret.

You may know one of those employees (or should I say EX-employee). He goes by the name of Mario Monti. He’s going to make sure that that particular other company continues so that I can collect huge amounts of money. He’s going to do exactly what I say he should do.

Let’s face it. The banks, in the pursuit of huge profits, permitted loans to everyone. And investment banks set up the CDS scheme – which, from what I can see is completely unregulated. Eventually it all caught up with them. Now, some high-powered (ex-)employees of those very banks are running Greece and Italy. Obviously, what must not happen is for everyone to stop paying the debts, which generate huge profits for the people running the CDS industry. If they stop paying the debts then the CDS industry goes down and the whole system collapses taking with it, erm, well, the people who’ve been earning bigger and bigger profits and bonuses whilst making everyone else suffer a lot.

I mean, that would be a bad thing, right? Right?