As I sat in my room in London last week, watching a debate on the BBC as to whether the UK should help out in the Greek crisis, I started to look for some good news economic stories and soon it occurred to me that there weren’t any.

As readers will know, I’m no economist, just a guy who’s been making a living, for a very long time, asking stupid questions. I have learned over these several decades that stupid questions are a thousand times fewer than stupid answers and that often the so-called stupid question is a zinger that the object of the question would just as soon avoid. In fact this led me to what I call “Mair’s Axiom I” which states “one makes a very serious mistake assuming that people in charge know what the hell they’re doing”. (As an aside, Axiom II states “you don’t have to be a 10 in politics, you can be a 3 if everyone else is a 2”).

The UK, not in the Euro zone is not, on the face of it, responsible to pitch in with the Greek tragedy or any of the others coming onto centre stage. There is an EU law which may compel Britain to chip in but the present government is not prepared to admit of it. That, to me, was the clue that there’s a hell of a lot wrong with the EU these days that will be very bad news indeed as matters progress.

The UK, to quote jazzman Fats Waller, is “not the only oyster in the stew”. But it’s a big one and it can’t be easily thrust aside.

It’s worth remembering that the spiritual farther of the EU, Churchill, in his famous 1946 speech about a united states of Europe specifically did not include the UK which, he believed, belonged in the English speaking world, not in Europe. Shunned by DeGaulle (perhaps for good reason) in 1963 the UK was finally accepted in 1973 and only after a referendum. I say perhaps DeGaulle was right because apart from his natural and deep seated bloody mindedness, he knew that the UK had, or thought it had, a “special relationship” with the US and, of course, with the Commonwealth. The point of all this being that in the UK the EU remains a domestic political issue. What makes all this especially interesting is that Eire is in deep trouble and whatever the UK may feel about Greece, Spain and Portugal, other basket cases, it simply cannot ignore Eire for a lot of reasons not least of which is the peace issue in Northern Ireland, which is still part of the United Kingdom.

Let’s go back to Churchill in 1946 and the reason for the Franco-German Coal and Steel pact which led to the Common Market and ultimately the European Union. Financial issues weren’t the only ones – indeed I would argue that peace in a war torn Europe was more important. And, so far, peace it has brought. But underneath that peace, as part of the national memories of many members, are issues settled, perhaps, on paper but not in national psyches. Don’t be too quick to cast this aside for if there is one thing the Yugoslavia break-up taught us is that ethnicity never goes away. Since and including the Congress of Vienna in 1815 there have been peaceful arrangements that lasted until national pride destroyed them. What right have we in 2011 to assume that somehow people have changed? That if it no longer makes monetary sense, the EU could become hostage to events long ago, the memories of which now re-surface as they always do?

There are other wheels falling off which imperil the peace of Europe, thus the world.

The United States would be, if a corporation, in bankruptcy protection if not actually bankrupt. In fact, it is now mathematically impossible for the U.S. government to pay off the U.S. national debt because the U.S. government now owes more dollars than actually exist! Even the good old printing press can’t help because if the U.S. treasury just printed the money that increases its debt even more.Perhaps the US wheels haven’t yet fallen off, but it’s been running on hot air for a long time…

Now the interesting question – China is the prime holder of American debt but it’s like a bank with no deposit insurance – the more you call in your debt, the less able the debtor is to pay. And, like a Shakespeare play, the plot gets thicker and more confused as you watch. For as China offers to bail out the EU, invests billions in Africa and continues to prop up Washington, it own economy is in trouble because – and where have you heard this song before? – its banks have too much money, right at home, invested in financially questionable undertakings!

Forbes Magazine reports that “[China’s] government bureaucracies fund themselves by foisting debt on state-owned business enterprises; local governments raising capital by selling land at sky-high prices to corporations they own; and a People’s Bank of China lavishing liquidity on the entire system in a way that makes Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke look downright stingy”.

“It’s a Ponzi scheme whose head is the central bank, and it can print money,” says Victor Shih, a China expert at Northwestern University.

Russiamay be the one ray of hope in this bleak picture but it faces the problems of trying to trade with an EU that hasn’t any money meaning she must, as China has done with the US, finance its customers so that they can pay for goods it sends them.How ironical it is that the economic basket case of the 90s may be the financial saviour of the smug Europeans who joked about Russia’s post USSR break-up problems and now welcome if not beg for her help. But Russia has its problems not the least of which is the plentiful supply of natural gas on the world market which is bound to drive the price down.

What does happen if everyone’s wheels fall off? Is it like the board game of Monopoly where you start all over with new money dished out?

I, as an interrogator, not an answer giver, dare not speculate except to say that whatever the picture, it’s not likely to be pretty.