Helicopter Cash

The more you hear from experts and politicians about how to solve the country's economic woes - the more you realise that none of them know what they're talking about.

The deputy governor of Bank of England floated the idea the other week - that banks might have to start charging people for holding onto their money - in other words introducing negative interest rates in a desperate attempt to get the economy moving again.

The idea is that firms and individuals would have to start spending and investing their money - in preference to being charged a sizeable fee - just for keeping their funds and savings in the friendly high street bank.

Now that sounds completely mad to me, but there are other ideas out there including my favourite - Helicopter Cash.

Now the 'logic' behind Helicopter Cash is simple - it's a scheme designed to give away free money just like throwing pound notes out of a helicopter - with the one proviso that the 'right' people pick the money up and spend it on the 'right' things.

In short it's a way of trying to stimulate demand in the economy by injecting more cash - but it will only work if the money is spent on boosting UK goods and services.

If people just put it on the bank or spend their windfall on a foreign holiday - then we're all back to square one and worse - since all this free money sloshing around will simply stoke up inflation.

But Helicopter Cash is not as daft as it sounds - because the government's artificially low interest rate policy is a free hand-out to mortgage payers.

Likewise the government's policy of 'quantitative easing' is doing exactly the same thing except that the new 'printed' money - is reserved only for the big banks. 

So Helicopter Cash would be aimed at the little guy - not the big guy - and I for one hereby promise that if the government would like to give me, say, £5,000 - I promise faithfully to spend it on something that is made or provided - right here in the UK.