In a powerfully good mood, I am here to sing the praises of the credit card. I am in New York City, to which I repair from time-to-time to get away from the hustle and bustle of Bermuda. New York City has been Disneyfied to such an extent that it now lags far behind the world's other great cities in terms of style, pace and all that is there.

I left Bermuda without my trousers. This was not a memory lapse or my embrace of nudism. It is just that I had heard that it was going to be 94 degrees in Gotham, so I wore Bermuda shorts, as part of my ongoing ambassadorial campaign on behalf of our Island nation to the lesser countries.

A certain amount of grief was the dividend from my sophisticated Upper East side friends, whose confidence in their legs does not allow them to sport shorts. Although it is not entirely relevant to our story, I came in for much greater criticism, from friends and strangers alike, for my array of Hawaiian shirts.

The dictates of fashion have rendered this friendliest of garments somehow passé, which I could bear if it had been replaced by clothing of equal élan. Instead, New Yorkers wander the streets in that most ungainly modern uniform: scruffy T-shirt, jeans, sneakers and those little ankle socks that girls wear. Thus clad, New Yorkers, who are mostly rubes, fancy themselves superior to anyone wearing anything else.

Truth to tell, I do not mind the sidelong glances and open abuse I have taken since landing here on Tuesday. The lack of long trousers, however, proved less sensible when the temperature dropped by 15 degrees, following a huge storm on Wednesday night. The solution, obviously, was to buy some proper trousers, but I was due to leave here on Friday to pursue a cross-country adventure in Illinois, and did not have time to allow for tailoring the length.

Undeterred, I marched into a men's store round the corner from my hotel and made my way to the trouser racks. Bingo! It turns out that I am a standard size (not what Woody Allen once referred to in that manner, "a 28 dwarf"), but a normal size and height that made it possible for me to buy two pairs of not unpleasant pants at a bargain price.

Downstairs to the cash register; swipe the old credit card; make a pathetic attempt to sign my name with a space-age pen on a plastic screen; wait for approval; pants in the bag; and I was back on the streets with trousers that go all the way to my ankles, and stop there.

Pounding along the avenues, I was struck by the ease with which an international transaction had been consummated. The trouser shop did not know me from Adam. I may look honest, but then so do most crooks. Yet my credit was as good there as it could have been. I probably could have bought every pair of trousers in the shop, in case my weight balloons up in my later years.

Does it get any better than this?

We know it gets worse. As I write this, the price of a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe has hit 100 billion dollars. That is Zimbabwe dollars, which apparently trade at about five billion to the US dollar. The dictator Mugabe is to blame for this, and since his fellow African leaders appear unwilling to do anything about it, matters can only get worse.

How Zimbabweans deal with this, I cannot imagine. News reports from there make Harare look like a regular place, but with bread at 10 billion dollars a loaf, it must be more like a dead zone.

I imagine it will not be long before Bermuda supermarkets catch on and start asking $10 billion for a loaf of bread. My advice would be not to pay it.

Some weeks ago, as I have mentioned, I started to use a professional cleaning service at my pad. It was expensive, but it made living and working at my house that little bit less toxic. The mould is still there, but if any of my friends had dared to cross the dangerous Causeway, they would have enjoyed seeing my little shack all spick and span.

Now I have been advised by the cleaning service that they are unable to obtain work permit extensions for their staff, and new permits will take forever, so my service has to be cancelled. This is what we in the home service delivery arena call a bummer.

One of the reasons I am a libertarian is my belief that markets work best when governments leave them alone. This is a classic example of the point.

I understand that Bermudianisation is terribly important, but in this case, Government's pursuit of protecting Bermuda is damaging it, instead. Bermudians do not want to do the work that my cleaning crew do (and nor do I). But Government does not want my cleaning crew to have any human rights, and why should they, being foreigners? They are horrible, you know, foreigners, and what is more they eat their children. We hateses them.

(The irony, of course, is that, like me, other foreigners do not want any rights to live here, just the right to work until a Bermudian comes along who can do, and wants to do, the work we do).

Can't run the risk of having foreigners bowling around the place with human rights, the Government has concluded, because the next thing you know they will be "at war" with the Government, like all the other workers. So out go the beastly foreigners and down the drain goes the financial well-being of the Bermudians who run my cleaning service.

I will have to do the work myself now, although under work permit regulations, I cannot pay myself. So I will be forced to save the money, which I will eventually export from the Island when the deportation order comes through. The money will not go to the Bermudian company that I used to pay, and they will not in turn give most of it to the cleaning crew, who will not be able to spend it in Bermudian stores, supermarkets and restaurants.

Hey presto, my place becomes a dump once again, and the economy shrinks, all for no sensible reason. Now that is Government at work for you.