Heather had a few unsettling words for her husband Harry when he carried his cup of coffee into what he thought of as their joint living room that morning.

“You may have heard of the Scottish effect,” she said, “which causes many people to reconsider existing alliances.”

He nodded.

“I must tell you,” she said, “that in a free and utterly democratic vote last night, half the people in this household voted to disentangle our existing union.”

He spluttered coffee all over the rug.

“Easy, big fellow,” Heather said. “That’s my rug now.”

“How can you have a majority?” asked Harry. “There’s only two of us in the house.”

“The dog voted with me,” said Heather, as Rover the mastiff growled his assent.

“Should you wish to check out our new arrangements, you may want to try your key in the front door,” said Heather. “It no longer works. However, you will find that the outdoor key that leads to the cellar will let you into that part of the house.”

“The cellar,” gasped Harry, who was doing a lot of spluttering.

“England and Scotland,” explained Heather. “England down and Scotland up. And I’m Scotland.”

“But the Scots who wanted to separate lost,” said Harry. “There is no dissolution.”

“Not this time,” said Heather. “But it will come. I’m just a bit ahead of the curve. And I am not alone.”

Harry looked around: “Others?”

“Sure,” said Heather. “Catalonia, Quebec, Belgium. But, perhaps more important, there are others closer to home. You remember my book club?”

Harry nodded.

“That’s where the idea of dissolution came up,” Heather said. “We all thought of it as a gateway to freedom. Look out the window and you will see strange banners flying from many houses.”

“Bunch of nutty women,” muttered Harry.

“Au contraire,” said Heather. “Ours was always an equal-opportunity book club. Men and women. Too bad you were never interested in reading. Like Ernie, two houses down. Ernie not only has voted for a sovereign state, he says he will guarantee my borders. Although I’m not sure what that entails.”

Harry was still poleaxed, flummoxed and dumbfounded: “But why would you want to be a sovereign state?”

“Cast your mind over the benefits,” said Heather. “Large sovereign states have large needs; small ones have small needs. I need no army. I can’t get a Hornet fighter jet into our backyard and I can’t fit a submarine into the goldfish pond. But I can issue my own passport and validate my own driver’s licence.

“All of us who used the book club to launch sovereign states,” she continued, “realize there will have to be a lot of negotiations and compromises. For example, we intend to keep medicare and we think we will have stay with Canadian currency for a while. Although, when Canada starts to dissolve in a few months, we might have to think of something. I rather fancy myself on the $20 bill.”

Harry could see the writing on the wall, even though he could no longer call that wall his own. “But what is in it for me?” he asked.

“Easy,” said Heather. “First of all, you get all the freedoms that I now have. Closer to home, you get the entire refinished basement. You get the beer fridge and the good television set. Plus, you also get the furnace, which gives you a lot of power that I trust you will use responsibly.

“In terms of our relations as state to state,” she added, “I realize that I am far better remunerated that you. Thus, I have set up a ‘developing nations’ fund to ensure that a small portion of my income flows to you. This fund will last only until you are in the black, and will be instantly void should you form any entangling alliances.”

“Entangling alliances?” asked Harry.

“Betty Jane Mulberry, two blocks over,” said Heather.

“Aha,” said Harry.

Then, he had one last question: “Is not one household small for a sovereign state?”

“It could be,” said Heather, “but we wanted to start small, although we can see there might be advantages to forming unions and acquiring leverage. But that is somewhere down the road.

“And as for you right now, Harry,” she concluded, “have a good time in the basement.”

© 2014 Investment Executive. All rights reserved.