Earth

Earth became the capital planet of the Sol duchy, which meant it no longer had a working exchange - or indeed any economy of its own apart from an enormous complement of bureacrats and pen-pushers!

As expected, this week witnessed the conversion of the Earth economy to a bureaucratic structure. The new bureaucracy's first action was to issue a decree condemning Earth's livestock herds. It was discovered that the herds were suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease, so the tainted beef was put to death.

Unfortunately, due to some spare forms going astray, the neophyte paper-pushers made a slight error. This small mistake resulted in the expansion of the slaughter order to include the razing of Earth's cereal fields, the closing of Earth's gold mines, the destruction of Earth's univator factories and a few other minor inconveniences. The ultimate implication of this minor mayhem is that Earth no longer has any goods to trade.

Despite these inconsequential mistakes, the Earth populace is reported to be adjusting well to its new role as paperwork processor for the rest of the solar system. Luckily, enough wood was saved from the general destruction of resources to make plenty of forms, in triplicate.