All that fuss about Samantha Brick's April 3 article, "Why Women Hate Me For Being So Beautiful". Mail readers obviously didn't do any research at all before keying in their bilious online comments, for if they had they'd have come across one of hers from almost exactly a year ago: "I'll always be that fat girl: Samantha Brick has always obsessed about her weight... all because she was a chubby child".
The latest, controversial hit was published two days too late, for it's made fools out of millions.This is about beauty versus brains, and brains win hands down every time.
What clever Brummie (and there's another preconception exploded) Samantha has discovered is what Malcolm MacLaren said years ago: you can make much more exploiting yourself than exploiting others. I'd like to know who at the Mail gave her the space to do this one, but I guess it's enough of an obvious coat-trailer to justify publication on its own meretricious merits, without having to speculate on the possible use of her feminine wiles at the workplace, delicious journalistic follow-up though that might be.
Can men do the same? You may care to copy and paste her article, and swap the sexes to make a comic spoof. The exercise is comically revealing, because male attractiveness is measured differently in a woman's eyes. They say a woman is what she is, and a man is what he does. He does confidence, action, aggression - like Lord Flashheart in the Blackadder series:
... and again here (from about 4:07 in):
Traditionally, the strategy for women is to have a sponsor, and to be set in a context of focused admiration, as Roger Vadim did for Brigitte Bardot in the cinematic launch vehicle "And God created woman":
But a young, slightly chubbier in those days Madonna broke the mould - it became "look at me", not "look at her", though again it's be piquant to know the who and how behind getting her the film deal:
Like Madonna, what's smart about Brick is her use of brash self-assertion - and if she hasn't really got the confidence, she's faked it very well for the purposes of her piece. She's played it the man's way.
Good luck to her.
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Patenting the debt bomb
It's only occurred to me today that Collateralized Debt Obligations might actually have been patented, and thanks to Google's patent search option here's one, by George H Butcher III, which he sold to Goldman Sachs. The application was filed in 2000, but the patent was finally granted in September 2007.
And here's one of the drawings:
And here's one of the drawings:
I suppose they patent Ebola-derivative viruses, too.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Guaranteed HUGE gain for UK investors!
A repeat of last year's opportunity, but even better: postage stamps without a stated face value represent a great buying opportunity."From 30th April First Class stamps will go up by 30.4% from 46p to 60p and that Second Class stamps will rise by 38.9% from 36p to 50p." - Economic Voice.
This is at a time when interest rates on variable-rate cash ISAs are 3% or less, so even allowing for the opportunity cost of leaving money in secure, tax-free deposits, you can make a rock-solid net gain of 26.6% - 34.8%.
Buy NOW (I just did) for this year's birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas - and all your business postage.
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.
Monday, March 26, 2012
"Lockerbie bomber" Al-Megrahi "innocent"
Back in 2009 (see here, here and here), as the authorities prepared to release the so-called Lockerbie Bomber to return to Libya, ostensibly on compassionate grounds, I came across a blog by Scottish law professor Robert Black. The latter, together with Jim Swire (father of one of the victims) smelt a rat.
Some suspect that not only was the wrong man accused - the wrong country, even (the operation may have been Iranian) - but that there was a deliberate miscarriage of justice and a cover-up, and that Al-Megrahi was sent home to prevent a retrial that would blow the whole affair wide open.
Now (hat-tip: Ian Parker-Joseph) Scottish newspaper The Sunday Herald has published a 5-year-old, hitherto secret legal review of the case, which they say contains evidence that could well have led to Al-Megrahi's conviction being overturned. The link to the (slightly redacted) 800-page text is here.
This is a bad day for the reputation of the Scottish legal system, especially when (as Parker-Joseph does) one is tempted to rope in outstanding concerns about the 1996 Dunblane massacre and alleged child abuse victim Hollie Greig.
Time for a full public enquiry - no "safe pair of hands", please, no cripplingly narrow terms of reference, full power of subpoena, all evidence on oath and no prior indemnification against prosecution for perjury or other perversion of the course of justice. And later, possibly, a huge action for damages by Al-Megrahi and his family.
And then let's see what else needs to be cleared from the Augean stables.
Some suspect that not only was the wrong man accused - the wrong country, even (the operation may have been Iranian) - but that there was a deliberate miscarriage of justice and a cover-up, and that Al-Megrahi was sent home to prevent a retrial that would blow the whole affair wide open.
Now (hat-tip: Ian Parker-Joseph) Scottish newspaper The Sunday Herald has published a 5-year-old, hitherto secret legal review of the case, which they say contains evidence that could well have led to Al-Megrahi's conviction being overturned. The link to the (slightly redacted) 800-page text is here.
This is a bad day for the reputation of the Scottish legal system, especially when (as Parker-Joseph does) one is tempted to rope in outstanding concerns about the 1996 Dunblane massacre and alleged child abuse victim Hollie Greig.
Time for a full public enquiry - no "safe pair of hands", please, no cripplingly narrow terms of reference, full power of subpoena, all evidence on oath and no prior indemnification against prosecution for perjury or other perversion of the course of justice. And later, possibly, a huge action for damages by Al-Megrahi and his family.
And then let's see what else needs to be cleared from the Augean stables.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Why the UK should join the EC immediately (look at St Kitts)
By EC I mean not Europe, but the Eastern Caribbean, and here's why I wish we could join them.
St Kitts defaulted on a public bond on 25 November 2011, and has this week concluded a deal with some of its creditors whereby debt outstanding to them is halved and the remainder to be paid back over 20 years. Others have agreed to accept a switch to "New Par Bonds", which have a term of 45 years. That should certainly buy some breathing space.
St Kitts and Nevis was (before this renegotiation) reportedly one of the most indebted nations in the world, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of some 200%. It is only the fourth country in recent times to use a "collective action clause" to force agreement to a debt restructure - the other three being the Seychelles, Belize and Greece.
Yet it's very far from being the basket case that these facts and figures would suggest.
The public debt was the equivalent of some 1.086 billion US dollars, which given a population of 50,314 (est.) averages out at $21,347 per head. But it's worse in the UK, where public debt per capita is $24,893. Yes, we Brits have a larger GDP per person, thanks to a more developed economy, but really our national credit rating should be, not "AAA with a negative outlook", but more like BBB ("Buggered By Banks"). This is reflected in our enormous private indebtness which (with other factors) boosts our total national liabilities to 492% of GDP, as Robert Peston reported last November. Personal debt including mortgages runs at something like £23,307 per capita in the UK; I really don't think the moneylenders will have got their claws that deep into our Caribbean friends.
If only we could write off massive amounts of debt and join the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, like St Kitts and Nevis. Their dollar is currently pegged to US currency at a rate of 2.67 EC to 1 USD. What a shot in the arm for our exports that would be.
Of course, we'd have to reconsider our social benefit and immigration policies. The British Labour Party may have been keen to buy votes with dole money and bring in cheap foreign labour to rub the Right's noses in diversity, but St Kitts has shown a preference for importing the wealthy instead. Under its Economic Citizenship Program (effective since 1984) a couple could acquire SK&N passports instantly for as little as c. £250,000 - mostly in the form of property investment but with a dollop of money towards the island's ongoing costs. That's a lot less than the £350k median price of a house in London. Admittedly, a one-bedroom flat in Charlestown goes for more like £285,000 - but it's still affordable for many not-really-that-wealthy people.
And for that, you could be domiciled in a country with zero personal income tax, a policy which the islands' PM Denzil Douglas (a Labour Party man, by the way) has stressed isn't going to change anytime soon. Instead, over there there's an annual tax on land and property, an old idea now receiving growing interest on the Internet among UK bloggers. At 0.2% (less, if it's your primary residence), that one-bedroom property I mentioned would incur a charge of £570 a year - which compares well with the English average of £1,196.
Sympathy for poor, beleaguered St Kitts? Save it for St Brits.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Matt Taibbi's "anti-Semitic" Goldman campaign
I think this may be GS' "duckhouse moment": a word or phrase crystallises what is wrong, so that the common man can see it. Sensing this, the GS supporters overreact, e.g. Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail:
"The most enduring image of Blankfein era is that of the great, vampire squid drawn in an excoriating article in Rolling Stone magazine in 2010. What Rolling Stone does not seem to have realised is that this was a rerun of a notoriously anti-Semitic campaign by the late 19th-century polemicist ‘Coin’ Harvey against the Rothschild family.
Whatever mistakes Blankfein and Goldman may have made, it does not deserve that."
Whatever mistakes Blankfein and Goldman may have made, it does not deserve that."
"Made mistakes... not deserve... anti-Semitic campaign..." Sounds like a panic reaction to me. Was, for example, betting - massively profitably - against your own product, a "mistake"?
According to Brummer's account, Loyd Blankfein is "determined not to leave until all the investigations hanging over the investment bank have been cleared up." I'll bet he is.
How about this memoir from Leo Kolivakis, formerly an analyst with a big Canadian pension fund manager:
Yes, they [GS] are an exceptional firm, attract some of the best, brightest and most interesting people, deliver exceptional service, but the crisis of 2008 exposed some serious conflicts of interests that have yet to be addressed.
Back in the summer of 2006, I wanted to short the hell of out structured credit products by shorting the ABX indexes. I had just completed research on CDO-squared and CDO-cubed and was certain the U.S. mortgage market was a disaster waiting to explode.
In November 2007, ABX indexes tied to the highest-rated subprime-mortgage bonds fell to new lows, a sign of deterioration in the perceived risk of the securities following a report showing home prices were declining in more than a third of U.S. cities but by that time, I had lost my job for speaking out on the risks of our credit portfolio.
What's the point? I remember a conversation with our Goldman client representative and some of their analysts where they kept asking me: "Why do you want to do this? Are you sure you want to do this?" It was actually annoying me and I told them "Yes, we are sure, just let me know what is the best way to go about this trade."
Well, we never put on the trade, but Goldman Sachs did and they made off like bandits shorting subprime mortgage bonds. They weren't alone. Some well known hedge funds like Paulson & Co. and a handful of others also made a killing. That whole sordid affair still bothers me to this very day. I lost my job, the pension fund lost billions, and Goldman made a killing!"
Back in the summer of 2006, I wanted to short the hell of out structured credit products by shorting the ABX indexes. I had just completed research on CDO-squared and CDO-cubed and was certain the U.S. mortgage market was a disaster waiting to explode.
In November 2007, ABX indexes tied to the highest-rated subprime-mortgage bonds fell to new lows, a sign of deterioration in the perceived risk of the securities following a report showing home prices were declining in more than a third of U.S. cities but by that time, I had lost my job for speaking out on the risks of our credit portfolio.
What's the point? I remember a conversation with our Goldman client representative and some of their analysts where they kept asking me: "Why do you want to do this? Are you sure you want to do this?" It was actually annoying me and I told them "Yes, we are sure, just let me know what is the best way to go about this trade."
Well, we never put on the trade, but Goldman Sachs did and they made off like bandits shorting subprime mortgage bonds. They weren't alone. Some well known hedge funds like Paulson & Co. and a handful of others also made a killing. That whole sordid affair still bothers me to this very day. I lost my job, the pension fund lost billions, and Goldman made a killing!"
And back to Taibbi, specifically his famous 2009 "vampire squid" article - here is part of his section on GS's role in the great mortgage swindle:
"...Not that Goldman was personally at any risk. The bank might be taking all these hideous, completely irresponsible mortgages from beneath-gangster-status firms like Countrywide and selling them off to municipalities and pensioners — old people, for God's sake — pretending the whole time that it wasn't grade D horseshit. But even as it was doing so, it was taking short positions in the same market, in essence betting against the same crap it was selling. Even worse, Goldman bragged about it in public. "The mortgage sector continues to be challenged," David Viniar, the bank's chief financial officer, boasted in 2007. "As a result, we took significant markdowns on our long inventory positions … However, our risk bias in that market was to be short, and that net short position was profitable." In other words, the mortgages it was selling were for chumps. The real money was in betting against those same mortgages.
"That's how audacious these assholes are," says one hedge fund manager. "At least with other banks, you could say that they were just dumb — they believed what they were selling, and it blew them up. Goldman knew what it was doing."
"That's how audacious these assholes are," says one hedge fund manager. "At least with other banks, you could say that they were just dumb — they believed what they were selling, and it blew them up. Goldman knew what it was doing."
If I had GS as my advisers, I'd want to know for sure if I was categorised as a favoured client, or as a "muppet" whose use was to buy GS "axes" and have my "eyeballs ripped out".
And perhaps Mr Brummer should seek to disprove Mr Taibbi's allegations, rather than spin them as the frothings of a racist/religious bigot. There are plenty of genuine anti-Semites and cheap gibes like the one he levels against Taibbi must ultimately serve to lower our guard against the real thing.
Maybe Brummer's sloppy dating - Taibbi's article appeared not in 2010 but 7 July 2009 - is an indication of his anxious haste, or that of whichever GS insider muppet ("it is my understanding", says the journalist, coyly hinting at his source) was briefing him about Blankfein's intentions.
Monday, March 12, 2012
UK youth unemployment almost as bad as Greece's
Here's the truth about those terrible youth unemployment statistics: the UK's is pretty much as bad as Greece's. In fact, two years ago, ours was significantly worse than theirs.
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