This week is the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall.
As a student, in the summer of 1989 just before the whole system imploded, I walked with a few others through Checkpoint Charlie into the twilight zone of East Germany to catch a train from East Berlin’s main train station to Prague.
The train itself was operated by East Germany’s railway company -the anachronistic and un-communist sounding Deutsche Reichsbahn.
The ancient rolling stock travelled from Berlin on a magical mystery tour of Soviet Bloc capitals ending in Bucharest, passing through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and on to Romania.
The carriages were divided by nationality with the German guards looking down their noses at the Slavs, particularly, for some reason, the Bulgarians.
We hopped onto the German section and settled into the wooden seats for a rattly journey which took us towards the still bombed-out centre of Dresden. Beyond Dresden, the train line followed the beautiful Elbe river through some of the most spectacular countryside in Europe.
Even though there was a lot of talk about East Germans seeking refuge in the West German embassy in Budapest, there was no sense that the whole communist system would fall apart.
This was only three months before the Berlin Wall was torn down, yet as is the way when big systems collapse, no one can get their heads around what might happen. No one is prepared to think the unthinkable.
Within months the game was over. These formerly closed countries opened up to the market. Initially, stock markets opened, as did currency markets.
Then, after massive debt forgiveness, the bond markets of a huge landmass from Berlin to Vladivostock opened up and the lives of hundreds of millions were changed irrevocably.
For financial markets, this geo-political shift was an extraordinary opportunity. Anyone with a passing knowledge of this part of the world was suddenly an ‘expert’ in what became known as ‘emerging markets’ finance.
A few years later, probably as a result of an interest in this part of the world, particularly Russia, I found myself on what is called a ‘proprietary trading desk’ in London at a large investment bank in the City.
Our job was to make money for the bank by speculating on the bond markets of the former Eastern Bloc.
At the time, this was regarded as ‘frontier’ finance because these places were considered slightly risky, yet certain banks were prepared to risk their shareholders’ capital in places where the boards of the banks had never been.
All they cared about was that we seemed to be making lots of money, and they looked smart.
One of the big changes in finance since those days is that, today, much of the world and certainly peripheral Europe look like emerging markets. Ireland is a classic case in point, depending on foreign capital to finance itself and its banks.
We have opened ourselves up to the financial casino.
Now the financial casino is out of control, with the policy of countries being judged by people who have no idea about the countries. So during last week it was ‘sell France’, the previous week it was ‘sell Italy’.
Who will be attacked this week?
This casino and the interests of speculative funds are now – as they were in East Europe back then – being put before the interests of the citizens.
Anyone who questions this nonsense is denigrated as not understanding the markets and not grasping how smart, wise and forward-thinking the markets really are.
In reality, what actually happened on proprietary trading desks – which are hedge funds within banks – was not that smart at all.
In my own case, the bank gave a small team of five individuals lots of money to play with.
The key assets were bonds issued by Russia. At the time in the mid-1990s,Russiawas borrowing from the west for the first time since the October Revolution.
As is usual on ‘prop trading’ desks nothing much happens until a big figure is reported and the market moves according to whether the figure is actually stronger or weaker than what the consensus expected it to be.
One of the biggest figures was what is called the US ‘non-farm payroll’ data, which comes out every month. The non farm payroll measures how many jobs are created in the US economy.
To see what happens, let’s take the example of a particular month where the consensus view in the financial markets was that there would be 250,000 jobs created in the US.
Imagine that ‘only’ 160,000 jobs were actually created. The bond market would rally on this news because a weaker economy (as indicated by weaker jobs data) would mean that interest rates were likely to be cut.
The bond market reacts positively to bad news. I realise that this sounds counterintuitive, but it isn’t. If interest rates fall, the price of bonds rise.
So now think about a ‘prop’ trading desk with a few traders and an economist who are supposed to be assessing risk in Russia, yet they are looking at the non farm payroll of the US.
All the while, Russia itself is being robbed by the oligarchs under the bleary eyes of a permanently tipsy Boris Yeltsin.
So they were borrowing and robbing at the same time, destroying wealth today and lumbering their children with debts tomorrow.
Yet this hardly mattered to the performance of the Russian market; what mattered was sentiment towards the US bond market.
Think about it: here we have the immediate economic prospects of a superpower, Russia, that only five years before was challenging the US, being reduced to the mood of speculators in prop trading desks and hedge funds.
My job was to figure out, using an array Of other economic data from the US, whether the consensus was a bit too optimistic or a bit too pessimistic. If I thought the figure was to optimistic, based on my own analysis, we would bet on Russian bonds and take big option positions to allow us to buy Russian debt at today’s price some time in the next few months.
If the non-farm payroll figure actually was worse than the consensus was expecting, the market would rally and the prices of all bond markets around the world, particularly those in the emerging markets would rally and we would make money.
That’s it. Sure there were rules about how much could be gambled.
There was a back office clearing all the trades, but in essence, the traders ruled the roost. Things haven’t changed much, except for the fact that these speculators have multiplied into thousands of hedge funds and the amount of money they are playing with has increased exponentially.
This is the so-called financial market.
If we fast-forward to today, we see that these trading desks are still the backbone of investment banking, while hedge funds dominate the trading environment. In addition to strategists and economists, there are algorithms and charts, which are used as trading strategies, signalling all sorts of buy and sell trigger points.
And as the world has become more economically unbalanced, with huge individual creditor nations and many smaller debtor nations, the basic emerging market model of the world applies not to former communist countries, but to most other countries.
The attitudes and greed of traders in the markets are leading to chaos.
This is why they need to be controlled and policed; otherwise we are in a situation where these guys will boss around governments and their lackeys in the rating agencies – who got everything wrong in the past few years. And they will become more powerful than elected politicians.
The markets aren’t clever or smart; I know because I have worked in them. I have seen good companies along the old East European train route dismantled by people who knew nothing about the specific industry and sold off to people who knew even less.
I have seen credible countries dragged into the mire just because some trader on a losing streak has to sell a performing asset to cover the losses on his falling assets. This rapacious form of capitalism only benefits a tiny handful of people. It makes the world unstable and puts countries on collision courses with each other, which European history suggests, can lead to something much worse.
If you don’t want to believe that, just take a train journey through central Europe and consider what actually happened there.
You can’t ram home this message hard enough, I was discussing this and high frequency trading with a friend of mine who is a crude oil options broker in London, and he is having none of the “corrupt market” stuff. To quote him “One side agrees to buy,one side agrees to sell. Same as always. People have day traded for decades. Now we’re just quicker.” Oh, “and the riots are caused by lazy people who don’t want to work and drink beer all day and I should look at idiocracy to see why the underclasses are so stupid!” – I… Read more »
“And they will become more powerful than elected politicians.”
I think they already are David.
Please get that translated (I am volunteering here) and send it off to Berlin. Mrs. Merkel and her cabinett are marionettes of industry and Mr. Ackermann (Deutsche Bank) and his fellow criminal bankers. They kneel down to their feet on every occassion since the markets crashed in 2008. Thus there is no way one of the most important economies in this game would ever agree on policies or any controlling body, at least not under the regime of the current conservative government with its narcisstic ministers.
David you’re letting the cat out of the bag!! I’ve been saying for years that these guys are just not that smart. I worked for one of the most prestigious brokerage firms in the US for a couple of years and I was constantly underwhelmed by the talent there. In the end promotion came down to your love of basketball (the boss was a huge fan) and having the right look for the company (going to the gym, posing beside your new BMW). The fact that these guys have the fate of the global economy in their hands should be… Read more »
I used US non-farm payrolls as an astounding indicator, too, David. http://thedepression.org.au/?p=1802 I was fascinated that real incomes in the US actually began a deep decline from 1972. I related that to the other phenomenon you witnessed occurring in Russia at the same time the Berlin wall came down: the increasing privatisation of what are notionally the public’s resource rents. That became, and remains, a world fashion. We might exit this crunch, IMO, if we were to reverse the process and capture our land and natural resource rents instead of a multiplicity of taxes on labour and capital. Treasury Secretary… Read more »
This article, which we could call. “Confessions of a reformed trader” offers us a very important look into a process which is , as David says, “causing collision between nations, and can as European history suggests…lead to something much worse.” We should remember that the kind of trading David talks about was propped up by the geopolitical push for “shock therapy” which stripped bare the real physical assets of the East Bloc. This was followed by the blackmail of Thatcher,Mitterand and Bush, where Chancellor Kohl was forced to pay a horrible price for the great hopes of German reunification,. What… Read more »
I see the point you are trying to make here but unfortunately it is the politicians & banks that have got us in this mess, not “traders”. Most hedge funds are small ie. less that €1.5bn in investable capital incl leverage and as stand alone entities have little impact on overall market direction. I dont know about you but the guys who I went to university with were a million miles away from being the smartest guys in the room, these are the same people who we are supposed to depend on to make the big decisions. Most of the… Read more »
Back in Berlin here reading David’s article with much interest as always. Two things: 1) The tail is really wagging the dog here: Opposition parties are pleading with Angela Merkel to agree to a solution different to the approach to individual countries heretofore, as it isn,t working. Much coverage on the different methods of shorting and the relative ineffectiveness of baning in some EU countries as volumes transacted in NY and Lon. Financial press livid at the German political approach. 2) Agree with the comments on the East and assets, lived here 89-2k so observed the transaction mechanisms. Currently taking… Read more »
The words ‘Greed is good’ made by Gordon Gekko in the Film ‘Wall Street’ is what’s coming to pass in recent years. These parasites should be either stopped in their tracks from doing what they’ve been doing or else they should be put on a very,very short leash so that they can’t do so much damage as they’ve been doing.
The problem here is a really simple one to understand and solve. YOU ARE RIGHT TO HIGHLIGHT THE TRADERS! However,all this detail of non-farm payrolls, bond maturities, coupons etc is confusing for normal folk. We dont need to know. We just need to know that the system we voted for is being implemented (with independently published QA fundamental variables like GDP, bank loan ratios, Money supply and a few others). Society just can’t function without delegation and we can’t all do an economics degree. We are told the system we use is capitalism (like it or not). Capitalism is about… Read more »
Like today, appalling damage was done by the ‘markets’ to Eastern European economies and to Russia after the Soviet Bloc had broken up. Poland in particular is well documented in Naomi Klein’s book ‘Shock Doctrine’. I was in Poland 4 times in the last 9 months, the vast majority of the population are still struggling on low wages, in small apartments, block after block, with the ridiculous, unattainable lifestyles of the rich beamed into their tiny living rooms. In the 1990s, Russia saw speculators, privateers, economists and neoliberals all arrive with presciptions as part of the ‘Washington Consensus’ which had… Read more »
I am appauled to see anybody here referring to any part of society as the underclasses even if it is during the course of a “chat” with a stock broking buddy.The term is offensive to all and sundry and needs no propogation in a forum like this. The whole thought of those silver haired sleazy lizards being permitted, by law or otherwise, to sit on their fat arses in some back office brokers room and pedaling the economic equivalent of heroin in the form a country’s debt makes me sick to the pit of my stomach.The same silver haired sleazy… Read more »
Its heartening to see the author moving from populist sound bytes towards sound policy biting the ass of the traders. While they are only the lackeys, they have far too much power (= money) under their control. While not wishing to cast aspersions on David McWilliams in his previous incarnation, I see a vision of traders at work with a line of coke in front of the keyboards to keep them alert in the fortieth straight hour of trading chasing their bonus. I don’t think people with so little life experience or understanding of consequences should be empowered by system… Read more »
I think DmcW has to up his game a bit:) There’s a sadness and hapless finger pointing to ‘obscure’ need for regulation without any gimlet setting out of what the regulations need to be. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOphFl88U-g The problem is compounded by approx $750 trillion derivative based bond trading sloshing around the world’s trading houses. Neither is this trading controlled and regulated correctly, nor the quality of the bonds upon which this trading is based properly assessed. As Dmcw describes vast tranches of investment, casino finance can move almost on a whim, or for the most abstruse of reasoning. A repeal of… Read more »
Remember: http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2011/08/08/what-happens-if-germany-says-enough DmcW “What if they were to come to the conclusion that either they underwrite everything in the euro and thus put themselves on the hook for all of us, or the euro goes and they are off the hook?” Well news today smart Angela Merkel has taken euro bonds off the table, as I prediceted:) “But this would be MAD(mutually assured destruction). On a much broader scale, it would be similar to the guarantee the Irish government gave to guarantee the private debt of the Anglo fleet, as public or sovereign debt. Euro bonds would actually work well… Read more »
It may be a good time to turn off the Pravda RTE propagandists eg David Murphy from News At One who was stating today the need for Ireland to continue on its Scott expedition programme in order to get back to the markets asap…here’s Booksley Born celebrated Frontline programme, who predicted where we are now
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/
Watch The Full Program Online | The Warning | FRONTLINE | PBS http://to.pbs.org/pjxqjm
The Two Bums The bum on the rods is hunted down As the enemy of mankind; The other is driven around to his club Is feted, wined and dined. And they who curse the bum on the rods As the essence of all that is bad, Will greet the other with a winning smile And extend him the hand so glad. The bum on the rods is a social flea Who gets an occasional bite; The bum on the plush is a social leech, Blood-sucking day and night. The bum on the rods is a load so light That his… Read more »
Great article David; thank you.
The definition of an “Event Horizon” is the point of no return before an object enters a “black hole” Ladies & Gentleman, I believe we have crossed the “Event Horizon” I believe the simple definition of a Financial Derivatives is a “product used to bet on any outcome in the stock market” I.E,shares,Oil,Banks,commodities,currency and anything else dreamt up by traders or their CEO. I believe this now includes Sovereign States and their Governments. As David points out in his Article “sell Italy buy France”He also briefly touches on the history of Europe and where our present crisis may lead us.… Read more »
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Article suggests that Traders alone are responsible for the instability of public debt around the developed world. Clearly countries who are over dependent on private funding are at the mercy of traders and must take responsibility for putting themselves in that position, while finance clearly needs greater regulation, one cannot legitimately lay all the blame on those acting out of self interest in trading public debt. A capitalist market economy is the best of a lot of bad options, left alone it will tend towards decay and thus we need govenrment regulation to protect citizens, curb the inevitable excess and… Read more »
This is another enlightening article. We seem to be getting closer and closer to reality – that we are depending on kids and cowboys – all mathematical and actuarial “geniuses,” for our banking system. Especially those institutions at the top. For example who owns the World Bank and its “subsidiary” the IMF? Who owns the FED or the Bank of England. Someone should let the cat out of the bag and see how our national financial pundits and media talking-heads react. No need to go to Chomsky to find out this one – even google/yahoo cant hide it yet. The… Read more »
Blaming a trader is a waste of time , they are equally incentivesed and pressurised to acgieve their sole objective and make a return on their capital and they absolutely will do whatever they can do within the ever widening boundaries of law to that end. The inability to contain them arises from weak and corrupt global governance, Clinton allowed for the repeal of Glass Stegall and despite all the ensuing damage to the US Economy after the recent crash there is an improbable chance that anything on a par will be restored. Despite all the damage these people have… Read more »
Who does DmCW believe will make the tacklE
Who are The TRADERS All the original Traders in Ireland were Quakers with their own simple self beliefs and humility.The Goodbodys , Ranks , Odlums , Davis ( Flour ) , Johnsons of Mooney & O’ Brien, Ballantynes ( flour ) , Shackletons , Hallinans, Andrews ,Pilsworth, Going ,Furlong etc . The origin of their success came from humility and sharing and an entrepreneurial spirit .They trived and became rich and later their worlds were surpassed by others that had different beliefs and aspirations. Today those that control that ivory tower are the greedy and mindless creatures created from the… Read more »
Hi David, Great article again. However, when you say “The attitudes and greed of traders in the markets are leading to chaos.”, I would argue that there is a wider group of people who are also to blame, albeit in a much diminished manner. While I’m not going down the paddythepig road of looking internally for someone to blame, I have to point out that employees with pension funds do not ask how their funds are invested, and there doesn’t seem to be a movement representing people who want their pension funds invested in a ethically superior fashion. Can pension… Read more »
Not just the traders but the banks accross all departments still don’t get it. After a quite two months with business went to my bank last week for a three month moratorium after making seventeen months consecutive p and i payemnts.They said they couldn’t do full moratorium but would consider three months interest only. In return they want to increase the interest rate by 1% for thirteen years. That is 32500 euros for a three month moratorium. I employ ten people in the State. Why bother?
Great article David. Just realized you sound very like Michael Moore. “Capitalism, a love story” was on tv the other night. He pointed out that in Roosevelt’s time in the States the highest earners in the country were paying 90% taxes. When Reagan came in years later a man from Morgan Stanley was made Finance minister or whatever the US equivelant is. And that was the beginning of the end of regulation. The banks and the super rich got to pay less taxes and play with money. In the US 1% of the population has the same wealth as the… Read more »
David McWilliams: ‘The attitudes and greed of traders in the markets are leading to chaos. This is why they need to be controlled and policed; otherwise we are in a situation where these guys will boss around governments and their lackeys in the rating agencies — who got everything wrong in the past few years. And they will become more powerful than elected politicians.’ Wrong tense. All of this has already happened. ‘Government’ sold their Sovereign Souls to bail out The Market in 2008. The Market is a mob-gang of transnational corporations,’human legal entities’ with the power to destroy thousands… Read more »
ps: London riots/Bad Samaritan meme
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14487982
‘The video of a 20-year-old Malaysian student being robbed by people who had pretended to help him has for many been one of the most poignant moments of the riots, with Prime Minister David Cameron saying it showed things are wrong in society’
Of course, the original ‘bad samaritans’ were/are the international, untouchable thugs of the bankster elite which David’s article refers to:
http://makewealthhistory.org/2010/05/24/bad-samaritans-by-ha-joon-chang/
Still, when ‘wild-eyed- Michelle’ takes control we can all console ourselves with the nostrums of The Gospel of Supply-Side Jesus:
http://makewealthhistory.org/2010/05/24/bad-samaritans-by-ha-joon-chang/
Did anyone notice that the Euro Financial Stability fund has been extended to banks as well as States? Proves Daniel Gros right for calling the hypocrasy of the Germans back in 2008. Back then they were the main blockers of a proposed eurowide fund to garantee and bailout banks. Angela Merkel – “each state should deal with its own responsibilties” and “(European) taxpayers cannot write a blank check for the banks”. Go Angela. However Daniel Gros wasn’t taken in – “If German banks share price was to drop by 25% in a few days, the Germans would change their tune”… Read more »
I think that the financial markets are now in a position where they can boss and bully governments. Look at the sheer amount of money that PIMCO has to invest. Those are the people lending money to governments and in a way dicating terms. Firstly they wanted governments to bail out banks so as they would be spared losses there during the financial crisis. So then goverments agreed and we moved onto this EU and US soveirgn debt crisis a direct result of goverments bailout out banks to keep markets happy. What do markets want now? They want the stronger… Read more »
If you only blame the ref for losing a soccer match, you might have a point but you certainly wont improve your performance the next time. However if you blame your own lack of fitness for losing the game, you can work on your fitness and improve. Countries would be better served to look at themselves first and see what they need to change rather than only blaming rating agencies and the markets. In sport Refs are not perfect and the rating agencies and the markets also make big mistakes. David has pointed out the many issues that we have… Read more »
Just read some of the comments. I am sensing that we are on the road of another “lemming run”. Everybody feels so wise now about the need for socialistic and Keynesian paths. Basically, we will now enter a “bull market” for left wing solutions and the phrase “we must”. Capitalism did not fail to seperate fools from their money. That it duly did without error. Regulation of interest rates made sure that there was a bubble – and now we are getting even greater regulation. So, at the point of being controversial, I will say now that this new lemming… Read more »
The best way to deal with traders is to leave them alone, to fail and die or succeed when good. That is happening with the most of them anyway. David, the company you worked for, does it still exist ? If you look the historical data the majority of hedge funds and speculators ceased to exist when they failed anyway. Only government backed big investment banks succeeded by government (people’s money through taxes now and in the future) help. The problem is usual government intervention either directly or through ECB, central banks and political policing. Governments best help is to… Read more »
Although powerful, the problem is not just about traders. This kind of trader only has power over the weak. The problem is our government left us to the wolves when it sacrificed sound finances for crony bailouts. If we were sound they cheap credit and stability would come to us. These kind of traders are just like a buzzard flying around a carcass. They didn’t kill the animal – we did. If the system was strong and there was sound financial management we wouldn’t be weak. They are a symptom of mismanagement but not the cause.
I actually disagree with David’s assessment of Eastern Europe. In fact, I think that you are completely missing the point with regard to economics in this essay. Most “industry” in Eastern Europe in 1989 was hopelessly inefficient, and ineffective. The entire system was planning gone overboard, to the point that it did not work. The speculators that were trading in it, were essentially buying and selling industries that often had no economic value, based on their inefficiencies. The banks did not make Eastern Europe into a wasteland – it had been carefully planned over the previous decades, by the dictats… Read more »
Morning, Just listening to the latest Presidential contender on radio, jesus its beyond a joke now. Back to Eastern Europe of the 1980s. Deco I was not defending the place. Due to a fascination with Russia I visited Russia in 1985 and 1987 and ended up living with a Russian family in 1990 and actually stood in the queues so I know what you mean. But equally, I did spend time in East Germany and Czechoslovakia and saw how awfully pathetic the regimes were. I saw in August 1989 on the anniversary of the Prague Spring, dozens of young protesters… Read more »
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As we’ve been saying for years, political extremism is rearing it’s head. After people have, effectively, given up, other groups. with other sets of promises, will arise: Nationalism (Irish jobs for Irish workers), Socialism (a fair days pay for a fair days work), and all the other nonsense- e.g. National Socialism (a fair days pay for a fair days work, bit only for the Irish). The reason they rise now is that everyone is looking for an ‘answer’, and are prepared to suspend all IQ points above about 75, in their desperation to believe in one. If you fall for… Read more »
David,
It appears, based on events, that with the combination of internet, technology, media, gadgets, information speed, information quantity, access, availability etc, the paradigm on which the markets operate has disintegrated into an algorithm black hole of a self destructive negative feedback loop.
Here’s a bit of kite analysis you may not agree or disagree with as an angle on current happenings in the bond market especially in regard to currency speculation. Call it the Alien Vs Predator…Whoever Wins, We lose. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GT59zmF_Oo So the derivitive OTC market explodes to €750 trillion over the past number of years. Lots of this stuff is dodgy, unpredictable Bank of America sand that’s sold abroad by Wall Street as castles in the air. A huge amount of this stuff is bought by European banks. Plus European banks eg Anglo through rabid lending practices inflate property bubbles eg… Read more »
Few outrival US Capitalism in terms of deceit and manipulation, the fact that they have complete contempt for fellow US citizens reveals the absurdity of believing they have but anything else for foreign rivals.
In zee future Merkel and I Sarkozzze, we will work more closeely toggether.
If yuzze pripherales do the austerity and pay our bankees all us our monies, vee vill givuse zee golden rules to keep yezall foooooked in zee debtor clubs.
Meanwhiles ve need more meetings for everybodies.
Enda: I don’t care if I lose my money, I’m in love with a fairytale…..take it away Alex with the titanic Orchestra:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiH4BFTELME
Sure it’s all a bit of nonsense…..
Re Merkel and Sarkozy announcement
It is incredible really. Our nations are being bankrupted by a tsunami of private speculative debt created by the financial sector (especially derivatives) and all we get are lectures on austerity from our political elites.
What they should be announcing is a series of measures to protect our nations and our citizens from the predatory wolf packs of speculators in the casinos that masquerade as financial markets.
Soros is calling for the financial federalisation of Europe in the form of Eurobonds.
This crisis is being used to fast-track Europe into federalisation.
Hi Colm Yes, i believe that your article is a fair overview of the current currency War being played out. There are also lots of the puzzle pieces missing, that is not a reflection on you , but a reflection on our past and present Finance Ministers, amongst other things… Who know,s the inside track on this ? Who would have to be brought “up to speed on financial issue,s ” ? Why don,t why start with our own Minster of finance , Mr Noonan. I am sure he has a calculator , I am pretty sure he has a… Read more »
Well,boys and girls,I hate to have to say it, but after what Merkel and Sarkozy had to say after their so called ‘meeting’ earlier on this evening the shit is quite literally now going to hit the fan!!! So much for the Lisbon Treaty??? It wasn’t worth the paper it was written on and along with all the spin from our so called political leaders about it being good for jobs and all the rest the crap they went on about during the referendum campaign and they scaring us into eventually passing it, it looks as though the chickens are… Read more »
Enda Kenny I believe is hoping to get the Chairmanship of the “Whiter Wool Movement”. He is hoping to negotiate better terms for Ireland from Mr.Frederick over in Pinchfield Farm, even though historically we exported most of our wool to Mr.Pilkington over in Foxwood Farm. So to summarise we seem to be getting nearer to Pinchfield than Pilkingtons……Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba,Ba (last bit represents the natives getting restless)…. I suppose there is always the “Sugar Candy Mountain” to look forward to, or for those who don’t believe in fairytales, well then ye can have in the words of Bob Dylan… Read more »
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/is-the-sec-covering-up-wall-street-crimes-20110817
This is probably worth spreading as far and wide as possible.