Roll Up, Roll Up - Everything Must Go

Fired on by Arnold Schwarzenegger's garage sale in California which saw old bikes, lawnmowers, sofas and old 8 track tapes raise an approximate 89 dollars and 15 cents to dent the state's budget deficit as much as gnat would the grill of a speeding juggernaut, Gordon Brown is putting out the country's old assets to help reduce the £175bn deficit.

From tomorrow you should be able to bid for the Tote on Ebay and Barclays will probably handle the student loan book as they are experts in taking toxic debt and turning it into £millions of profit for themselves and the alchemists who touch the rubbish with their financial version of the Philosopher's Stone. They are up to their old tricks again as with the Protium gag of last month, this time with £4bn of Collateralised Debt Obligations worth about as much as a knackered push bike in real terms. After those boys have finished with it there will be more capital on their balance sheet, a hefty book profit on a new loan and around 45 new millionaires after a few strokes of a pen and two fingers at the taxpayer and the FSA. The Student Loan book should be a doddle for clever people like that.

There are some who question the prudence of our PM on financial matters, would you believe. This fire sale should raise around £16bn to help reduce our rather desperate position and probably not inspire all the credit agencies curious as to how our Bond sales will go after our Quantitative Easing finishes as any more of it will reduce us to a banana republic with no bananas. Some wistfully remember that there was a time when we had rather a lot of gold in our vaults at the Bank of England - today those vaults are stationery cupboards as some bright spark sold it all close to the bottom of the market. Had we some left at this point it might have been handy as all those smiling chaps on TV might have bought some as those in the know will tell you gold is at record high prices.

Some would say only an idiot would have sold our reserves at a cut price and not kept it back for what it really was meant to be for - a rainy day when we were almost bankrupt. But Gordon knew best then as he does today. Fear not, £16bn is just the start of it. Jacqui Smith has pledged to sell her husband's collection of porn videos, Hazel Blears has said she would sell her second home if she could work out with the taxman which one that is while several MPs want to sell the shirts off their backs as they feel they are underpaid and hard done by on expenses.

Welcome to Britain, where it's the sale of the century. Everything must go.