Eat my naked shorts

I know some of you drop in here sometimes for guidance on the future of the world economy. (Hiya Ben, hiya Henry... Hey! Alan! Good to see ya.) You'll notice I have been keeping quiet lately, as the whole thing blows up. This is because I don't want to spook the markets. One incautiously chosen word from me right now, and we could all be learning to skin rabbits.

However, I laughed my ass off last week at the US Fed/Treasury announcement that they had a trillion dollar plan that would save the world, and I laughed even harder when global stock markets leaped 10% in response. What we have here is a huge omelette trodden into the carpet. The fact that a man has burst into the room and announced that he is going to turn the omelette back into twelve fresh eggs does not mean he is, in fact, going to do it.

The mainstream media coverage of the financial crisis continues to be wretched. Most newspapers failed to note that half of the 10% rally last week wasn't driven by suddenly happy investors buying stocks they wanted, it was driven by desperate hedge funds forced to buy the very stocks they specifically didn't want, or risk going to jail. (Because, to get technical, they had to cover their short positions, the day after naked shorts were banned overnight. Does anyone really want an explanation of that? Doesn't it sound much more fun if you don't know?)

No wonder those shorted stocks (banks, financials) all fell on Monday by as much as they rose on Friday, as the hedge funds, having done their legal duty and dodged jailtime, dumped them all again. This market is a joke.

Sheesh, if I start talking about this I'll talk all night. (And I've a novel to finish writing, so... back to my book.)

(Oh, and the very nice photo of eggshells was taken by Linda Alstead, whose website mixes cooking and photography - together at last! She used a Canon PowerShot G3 1/2s f/8.0 at 23.0mm, photo-fans... this means you, Phil, I know you love it when I talk dirty...)