Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox.

You could be forgiven for thinking that you have heard it all about why money values are falling and cash seems to be dripping away from your savings daily. Now there is a new explanation. Termites in Uttar Pradesh have chewed their way through bank notes worth some 10 million rupees. And this is not an isolated incident.

In a repeat performance in Bihar a trader lost his life savings to the money grubbers. We know how he feels. In a breathtaking (even for bankers) disclaimer the manager of the bank in which the trader’s deposit box was sited said “The bank is not liable for the deposits kept inside the safe as it is only when a locker is found broken that the bank is answerable”. Dentists are not responsible for your teeth either, I suppose, and certainly not when they are in your mouth.

A very senior and erudite banker explained to me the other day why printing trillions of dollars did not lead to inflation. Technical jargon abounded, logic was chopped as finely as any I have ever heard, commonsense was conveniently ignored.

Money is a symbol of goods and services, nothing more. Print more of it to represent a given quantity of goods and services and its value goes down. No amount of logic chopping changes that. But money is not just the notes and coins we handle. It is confidence, too. Lose confidence in money and it gets transferred elsewhere – to gold, for example. Ah, you noticed the price of gold, too, did you?

What is happening to our money system is that, due to gross mismanagement resulting from unchecked greed, it is failing. As it does, valuables of other sorts, such as commodities, will take its place. Already many people in poorer countries are turning back to barter where I give you a bucket of water and you give me a loaf of bread. Primitive, perhaps, but the values of the items being traded are swiftly established and the concept of trade – the willing buyer and the willing seller – instantly effective.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, recently complained that people are not angry enough with the banks. Perhaps he has forgotten that possession is nine tenths of the law and that the banks possess our money. They have the power to lock it away from us for the rest of our lives. That’s why the anger, though there, is muted.

Yes, the banks are and will remain well and truly in control of our money – provided, of course, that the money grubs don’t get at it first.