The Currency War is Here, Big Mac and all

It seems that financial matters may dominate the rest of this year's news stories as the Eurozone crisis looks to rumble on from Frankfurt down to Athens.

The world all seems a bit strange this week. England's national football team actually won a game at Wembley, Kerry Katona is actually on Television and the Swiss are actually about to wage a war. Well, sort of, anyway.

Ever the neutral, this week the Swiss have - according to the Guardian - "sparked fears of a new currency war." A what? Exactly. This "currency war" comes as the Swiss have sought to peg the Swiss Franc against the failing Euro currency by ensuring that the value of one of these little silver coins can be worth no more than €0.83.

The reason why the revolutionary Swiss - once home to Russia's very own Vladimir Lenin - have reigned in their runaway Franc is to keep the value of their exports at reasonable levels for us European paupers and to arrest the damage done to the tourism industry. If this all sounds a tad too serious and jargon-like, don't fret because the Daily Mail, champion of the people of England, is here to help.

Where other newspapers continue to bombard their readers with numbers and lengthy terminology, England's brave Daily Mail has reduced the story (literally) into bite size chunks for us readers to digest. Where else would we need to look when at the top of the article from the 17th of August this year, they scream at us: "Diners would pay 128 per cent more for a Big Mac in Switzerland than the U.S." Other than shocking us with the news that people in MacDonald's are referred to as "diners," we now have a real-life, hard-hitting effect of the Swiss Franc's rise, measured against the Big Mac, the hallmark of all economic matters. And an obvious reason as to why the currency needed to be pegged back.

But whilst the Swiss may be constructing trenches out of cheese and preparing to start firing little silver coins into Europe and across the channel, the British politicians have returned to parliament. However, the so-called "currency war" seems to have evaded their attentions. Instead the focus is schools, free schools, faith schools, Boris Johnson's hair at the select committee and James Murdoch possibly not telling the truth about phone hacking.

In terms of British finance and spending, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne ensures us that there would be no action to change the economic plans, in spite of fresh fears that we could be heading towards the juicy sounding lollipop and sherbet combination of a double-dip recession. To clarify: Switzerland's currency is that strong that they are taking action, Britain's economy is that weak that we'll be taking no further action. Simple, really.

It seems that financial matters may dominate the rest of this year's news stories as the Eurozone crisis looks to rumble on from Frankfurt down to Athens. That - sprinkled with a bit of phone hacking and rioting -will see the British media through until around December, when we'll start to see outrage at the rising price of the Christmas dinner and the disapproval of music hipsters everywhere as another graduate from the Simon Cowell academy of pop gets the Christmas number one. But at least we can sit safe in the knowledge that a Big Mac will now be marginally cheaper for an American tourist.

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