All Hail, Emperor Guano!

Referring back to an earlier post, Brit (of Think Of England fame) suggests we start calling Brown 'Emperor Guano'. This may be strangely apt... Consider, if you will, the fate of the tiny South Pacific island of Nauru, and ponder the parallels. This dot in the ocean grew rich on guano - very rich indeed, to the point where Nauru was for a while the richest sovereign state in the world, in terms of per-capita income. Phosphate mining they call it, but make no mistake, that phosphate originally came out of seabirds' bottoms. Nauru had grown rich on birdshit. It would not take a genius to suspect that some kind of bubble was being blown up here, and that when the guano ran out, the economy of Nauru would crash and burn. And so it proved. When those phosphate-rich deposits had been mined out - with massive environmental degradation along the way - Nauru's economy collapsed. In the 1990s, the island tried to earn some kind of living as a tax haven and money laundry, but that didn't work out. Now Nauru is dependent on Australia and, in return for aid, has been obliged to house an offshore detention centre for asylum seekers...
So - all hail, Emperor Guano! You have ruled us well.