The ultimate doom and gloom scenario.

tomstickland

I had a really interesting discussion with someone at work about this today.
There must be a book that covers the basic theories via a series of thought experiments.
I'm going to take a look at those mentioned so far. I'm feeling pretty intrigued now - this is so like what I do in my job. ie: start with a basic model and then question what that means in terms of the effects of changing things.

Austin_Allegro

tomstickland wrote: »

Is it possible for the whole economy to topple over?

What if loads of people lose thier jobs, tax income falls right down, welfare state costs increase, along with all the money borrowed over the last few years.
Could it become totally unworkable, and we end up loss of public services, people scavening for food, and anarchy etc?

How could the govt try to stave this off? Would it be more borrowing or can they magic up non existant money by printing it?

Of course it's possible, and has happened throughout history. Notable recent examples include the collapse of Germany after WW1 and the fall of the Soviet Union in the early nineties. Zimbabwe and Somalia are current examples though, being Africa, are not quite comparable.