This week I had a phone consultation with a young lady stockbroker from Cyprus. She told me she had attended an event connected with the 'Hat Theory' of Edward de Bono, the lateral thinking guru.
The Malta-born philosopher, who recently gave Bloomberg a lengthy interview, has been one of the most effective thinkers of the 20th century. One has yet to see what his impact will be in the 21st.
His ideas on the fall of civilisations are particularly appropriate in the current circumstances when many great men have observed that capitalism has fallen - for the time being, at least. There can be no capitalism with government pulling all the strings in banking. We must be happy with government having an overall control of the banking system, but if the state is to determine who does or does not obtain a loan, we are only heading towards communism of the most brutal sort.
The extent of the downfall of the world banking system can be seen by the fantastic drop in the capitalisation of the world's leading banks, among them Citigroup and UBS. One wonders what would have happened to Malta, had the same happened to HSBC.
The full blast of the present financial blizzard has hit the UK worst of all. A country like Italy has hardly suffered to the same extent. The UK had pinned its fortune on the global provision of financial services, while Italy had decided to rely mainly on manufacturing. This is, however, declining rapidly. If it is to survive, it must innovate. Crisis is by no means absent from its manufacturing base as we can see from the sad prospects of the defunct ST Microelectronics project in Catania. Let Malta take note.
Italy has been saved for the immediate future, but not for ever, by the euro. This currency, as The Economist has noticed, has come out of the crisis with flying colours.
The Sunday Telegraph (December 29) carried a full page article, 'The Z to A of a world turned upside down' with the text wrapping a large picture of Lord Peter Mandelson, the Labour grandee who is working hard to put sterling into the euro. His enemies are showing their weakness by the vitriol they are seeking to pour on his name. The otherwise highly competent article dubbed him 'The Lord of Darkness'.
Mandelson, a former EU Commissioner for trade, would know everything about Jean Claude Trichet's stand this week on the unsuitability of sterling's credentials for euro entry.
We need not go into the statistics - they are also very painful, for the UK has always loved its currency.
Every holder of sterling in Malta must know that it has been authoritatively observed that Britain will soon face a deficit of 10 per cent. The Financial Times on Tuesday interviewed Peter Hambro, chairman of Peter Hambro Mining, scion of the great Hambros Bank which managed the highly successful Malta Development Fund.
"What is there to support the pound?" he asked. "What do people buy from us? They used to buy financial services... What else is there? Tourism?"
The economic situation in the UK underpinning sterling is exactly as Hambro describes it: the euro is momentary and, one must say, by comparison, in a far more enviable state. It is menaced by explosions like the one a few days ago in the streets of Athens.
The states of southern Europe, Spain, Italy and Greece present enormous unknown threats to the triumphant euro. Some hedge funds are betting on the demise of the euro. Are they going to be as successful as they were in their gambling with Volkswagen shares?
This is certainly the time when a great thinker like de Bono should come forward with ideas. In Margaret Thatcher's day The Observer had advised the Iron Lady to read Keynes and De Bono. She did exactly that.
One of de Bono's great thoughts concerns the fall of Chinese civilisation, which failed to evolve because of a lack of lateral thinking and consequently of inventions and discoveries as characterised western civilisation.
On January 5, the FT gave full confirmation of de Bono's views on the ossification of Chinese civilisation. It failed because it failed to innovate. It was the Chinese who first discovered that a paper currency carries inflationary risk. The Chinese failed to follow up on their discoveries.
Sterling (and one must admit, its massive over-extension) has helped the world, and in particular Malta, to discover affluence. It requires in future a blend of the ideas of Hambro and de Bono.
Incidentally, the FT must be groaning for a letter by de Bono on the current crisis. Hambro has already expressed himself.
Mr Azzopardi Vella, economic consultant with DBR Investments Ltd, has promoted the Malta Development Fund and advised S and P.
johnazzopardivella@hotmail.com