July 2010

In a moment of crisis it is not enough after a while to carry on shouting about what is wrong. At some point you do have to start thinking about how to put things right. What things would we do differently? The challenge lain down for those who want change is, ‘Well what’s your plan […]

It is so engrained in us to think and speak of ‘the economy’ that we are, I think, having trouble seeing that there no longer is just one economy. There are two. Finance and the rest. They are, of course, still joined. But increasingly the Financial world has ceased to be a partner. It has

Back on 19th May I wrote “I think Germany finally has had enough. Enough of being blackmailed by Sarkozy and enough of telephone calls from Obama. The German’s don’t like being told what to do.” (Things Get Political and Nasty). Since then tensions have risen. My point then was that what the US needs and

Ask yourself this, what are ‘we’ – our leaders and the bankers – trying to get us back to? Sustainable growth and development? Or irresponsible risk-taking and unstable bubble creation? Which do you think the bankers and politicians would say they are going for? Of course there’s no question is there? Only problem is they

Could be something could be nothing. We had the now customary machine traded ramp job in the last half hour of a day that saw the Dow up insanely only to loose the lot. It would have been down had the ramp job not squeezed out a positive headline for tomorrw with a 50 point

Well globally stock markets are on a tear. Ftse up 2,4%, the Dow opened 1.2% up. Far East is closed now but up too. And Gold is falling vertically on Wall Street’s opening down 1.1%. Why? The only significant news I can see out in public is that China has told it sovereign wealth fund

Back on 25th May I wrote a piece called, “Caja’s – will the ugly truth out soon-ish”. Bad title, but it turns out I was correct. The truth is now out. Thanks to a really good report by David Watts ( I wondered what happened to him after he left school – Jam fans will

Most of us don’t get to witness a bank bail out in its formative, embryonic stage. We aren’t usually aware of them until they are fully formed. But in Hungary we might be able to see one being created. Hungary, as we all know, is hurting. Last week Hungarian politicans began to talk about asking

In the previous post below this, I talked about Short Selling. As I said at the end, it is wrong to single out Shorting. It is Speculation that is the problem, not just shorting. Or more accurately, the problem is when the balance between investment and speculation gets out of whack. There will always be

Like most things Short Selling can be made to seem very complicated when in fact it isn’t. Profits used to come from the value or worth of an asset going up in price. Investing or Going Long is the traditional buy and hold. If, however, you want to trade Volatility instead of just Value or