Mind Your Own Business is sponsoring a Design a Formula 1 Circuit competition on F1 Fanatic.

If, like us, you find the existing circuits rather dull and think they could do with livening up then why not enter?

There are two £100 (or equivalent in local currency) prizes up for grabs – one for a realistic track, and one for a fantasy tack.

Competition details are here.

It is no surprise that exchange rates reflect the volatility of the markets in general.

More surprising perhaps is the relative strength of the dollar when assessed over the whole period since the present crisis began.

Many factors are at work. Yet one of them may be that, after all, the fundamentals of the American economy really do remain stronger than those of Britain and Europe.

Where the USA retains a genuine enterprise culture, the engine of recovery, the bureaucratic EU lacks strength in depth, and the UK is undermined by disproportionate public and private sector debt.

Meanwhile, American entrepreneurs can enjoy the benefits of supplying relatively cheaply from Britain and Europe, while British and European entrepreneurs should make the most of being relatively competitive in terms of price in the US market.

Given the unpredictability of the markets, including the currency markets, who knows how long it will last?

Natural entrepreneurs are the sort of people who look at the Bond films and realise that the sums do not add up.

Even as little children, we calculated that Bond would have to be about ninety to fit everything he did into his life, and that no private individual would have access to enough surplus cash to fund a Bond villain’s lifestyle.

For example, how could Hugo Drax build his own secret space station and run his own shuttle programme in Moonraker at a time when even NASA’s budget was under pressure?

Yet it is strange how things have changed. Now there are a number of individuals with real wealth in excess of ten billion dollars – who are in fact worth more than most countries. More importantly, several of them also have the liquidity to spend a substantial proportion of that wealth relatively discreetly.

At the same time, new technology and globalisation have reduced prices – and the recession looks to reduce them even more – to make world domination an affordable option for the successful entrepreneur for the first time since Cecil Rhodes.

So here are some of the bargains you can get for under a billion.

1   White Cat: probably easier to obtain than ever since the Cats Protection League lost all their money in the Icelandic bank crash. True. Honestly.

2   Private Island: there have always been islands for sale. Of course, their number was limited, but the Emir of Dubai has shown how even this is no longer a problem – now we can build our own.

3   Secret Escape Tunnel: Silvio Berlusconi has had one for years – probably for when the tax inspector called – but in the end found it more convenient to simply buy the Italian government wholesale.

4   Largo’s Yacht: Roman Abramovich’s latest makes it look like a pedalo. Indeed, Roman’s is said to have its own missile defence system, so there is no danger of chaps in orange swimsuits parachuting down on it. Moreover, there are great bargains to be had in the second-hand market, especially at the moment.

5   Weapon of Mass Destruction: nasty virus, Cold-War Surplus atomic device, unpleasant chemicals, or just a very big industrial laser – take your pick. There are more potential suppliers than ever.

6   Ice Palace: there is already an ice hotel in Norway – or at least there is for the next few months; it does tend to melt a bit come spring.

7   Supertanker: second-hand quarter-million tonners have been sold for scrap at remarkably low prices – especially since some are too big for some of the world’s major seaways – but you will need to pay extra to install the bow doors capable of swallowing nuclear submarines.  

8   Private Army: after the embarrassing lows of Angola, the Seychelles, and “Soldier of Fortune” conventions in the 1970s, the mercenary has made a big comeback in the form of the Private Military Contractor (PMC). Just give Blackwater a call and tell them Dick Cheney sent you.

9   Secret Base in Extinct Volcano: pricey, but the trick, suggested with great prescience by the Bond films themselves, is to get the Chinese in. Look at how the new Shanghai appeared from nowhere. 

10  Space Vehicle: poor Hugo Drax was before his time. Another bearded megalomaniac looks set to make private space travel a reality – but has Branson the proper sense of style required in a Bond villain?

As the recession bites, every day brings a list of job losses that resembles the ghastly daily reading of the names of those condemned by the French Revolutionaries...

...except that there is no sign of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The self-employed read the lists with mixed feelings. Of course, there is real sympathy – “There but for the Grace of God go we.”

Yet there is also a sense of relief that we are not the ones in the tumbrils. We are not dependent for our entire livelihoods on the whims of executives whom we have probably never met.

Or are we? The small print of announcements like the loss of 10,000 job losses at British Telecom is that consultancy and contract workers are usually the first to go.

This means that small businesses – the consultancy firms and sub-contractors – feel the pain of job cuts before big business.

There is no point complaining: it is the right decision. Most employers feel the strongest moral obligation to their longest serving permanent staff. Those of us who are also employers feel the same.

Moreover – although this is usually a secondary consideration – it is legally simpler and less expensive to get rid of consultants and sub-contractors.

That may in fact provide the silver lining – at least for those small businesses who survive. The big boys will eventually be forced to cut their permanent staff as well and a lot of those jobs will never come back. This whole experience, if nothing else, proves the value of the flexibility of relying on contractors and consultants: the best way to avoid the legal hassle and expense of making permanent staff redundant is to have no permanent staff.

So, although we may be the first out, we may be the first back in when things improve – as they will... one day.

History gives a comforting sense of proportion.

If this cash crisis seems insoluble, reflect that there were eleven bigger crises in the 19^th century alone – and that was a century of unparalleled growth and prosperity.

Most of those crises are now forgotten by all but economic historians. In almost every case, a period of excessive growth was followed by a slowdown, but then the powerful force that is human enterprise reasserted itself and growth resumed.

It is the exception that everyone remembers – the Great Depression, when governments around the world did not wait for enterprise to do its healing work but prolonged the pain by well-meant interference: tariffs shut down global trade, and increased state spending meant higher taxes and deficits. Politicians, take warning.

Yet there are other past crises from which we can learn, all of them – so far – much more dangerous than the one in which we now find ourselves.

1   Tulip Mania, 1637. Cause: excessive speculation in tulip futures – honestly! Resolution: the Netherlands passed strict regulations on futures trading – although, by that point, everyone realised that the whole thing had been rather silly...

2   The Darien Scheme, 1698. Cause: most of the hard cash in Scotland was lost in a disastrous colonial expedition. Resolution: Scotland’s Parliament consented to a merger with England on favourable financial terms.

3   The South Sea Bubble, 1720. Cause: over-valuation of stocks in Britain’s South Sea Company. Resolution: the British government basically nationalised the “toxic debt” – but, less generous than today’s governments, also confiscated the estates of the Company’s directors.

4   The Mississippi Company, 1721. Cause: a French version of the British South Sea Bubble. Resolution: the French government established a national lottery – but the Company’s losses still added to the excessive state spending that eventually triggered the French Revolution.

5   The Panic of 1797. Cause: world markets were frightened when it looked as if the British might be beaten by the French – who had Napoleon. Resolution: in accordance with tradition, the French were soundly and quite properly beaten by the British – who had Nelson. Hurrah!

6   Post-War Austerity, 1949. Cause: Britain simultaneously gave up captive markets in India, nationalised key industries, established an expensive welfare state, and had to pay huge war debts to the Americans. Resolution: for thirty years, until the Thatcher Administration, Britain, in the words of a German Chancellor, continued to live like a millionaire who lost all his money but did not realise it.

7   OPEC Crisis, 1973. Cause: the West panicked when Arab states asserted their new economic power. Resolution: since then, the Arabs have been investing a lot of their oil profits in the West – to the great satisfaction of both sides!

This too shall pass.