And that you can make payments efficiently and securely. So the economy can flourish and ordinary people can make a living, safe in the knowledge that their money will retain its value and is protected. My own economic coming of age happened during the deep recession at the beginning of the eighties.
I was a youngster of about 15, and evening after evening I would watch news reports about the bankruptcies. Unemployment and inflation had skyrocketed, and the hole in public finances kept getting deeper. I also saw the consequences for society, sometimes up close. Falling prices on the housing market meant the mortgage on my childhood home was ‘underwater’.