I've been a good boy all week, working hard and making progress with my current JFH (Job From Hell). So I thought I'd give myself the afternoon off. This involved buying a copy of the Grauniad, and retiring to the James Joyce pub to read it, accompanied by several cups of tea (that's not how you spell 'Murphy's', Keefie, and those glass cups are damn big - ed).
I wish I hadn't. Today's Grauniad is replete with stories of global economic meltdown, largely prompted by the firesale of HBOS (Halifax/Bank Of Scotland) to LloydsTSB and the 'rescue' of Lehman Bros in the US.
I'm a simple geezer, financially. I tend to go along with the idea that if you don't have cash money to pay for something then that means you cannot afford it, and it's better to wait until you can. Everybugger else in the 'developed' world seems to think otherwise, and get themselves into all kinds of shit with credit cards, personal loans and whopping great mortgages. Hell, even I could spot the problem with giving people a 125% mortgage: instant, massive, negative equity.
So, not content with Dubya wasting 5 TRILLION DOLLARS on a pointless and unwinnable war in Iraq, we now face the complete and utter meltdown of the western financial scam system.
Woe is you.
On a lighter note, there's a brilliant story about a crap golfer.
4 comments:
Brilliant story about Maurice Flitcroft though Keef - thanks for putting that link in.
DB
Loved the Maurice story!
NZ Herald had a great story on the current financial crisis. The analogy was that if the lenders gave money to people who are like the characters in the TV series "My name is Earl", then it was doomed to fail!
Story here: Why don't they just print more money?
What I don't get is how quickly the stock markets rebounded at the end of the week. Bail out the big losers and suddenly the world comes right again? It doesn't make sense.
Ostrich with head in sand comes to mind.
Yup, it made interesting reading on a flight back to Abu Dhabi, where the powers that be are doubtless looking to see what other bits of our tottering Western economy can be buught up for a song (umm, song in a minor key, and every second word is "Habibi")
Short selling
Let me get this straight. Short selling is when I borrow Keefieboy's car which is worth $10,000. I pay Keefie $100 for the privilege.
I then sell his car for its true value of $10,000 to Billy, leaving the Goat having shelled out $10,100.
The car then goes wrong, and is now worth $5,000. Billy sells it back to me for its new market value, and I then give the car back to Keefie, making $4,900 free money in the process.
Errm... how come I can sell the car when it doesn't belong to me?
When the entire global financial system is propped up by this sort of dodgy thinking, small wonder it goes pear-shaped quite so spectacularly.
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