Mesmerising

Good bye

Afternoon delight The hippy sisters.

Save the world? Hank just didn't have a clue

The staggering incompetence of the US Treasury Secretary is now acknowledged - and is a disaster for George Bush

Anatole Kaletsky- The Times

The Emperor has no clothes. If you want to know why American capitalism is on the brink of disaster, but also want to understand what will save it, then log on to the C-Span congressional website and watch the interrogations of Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, by the Senate and House banking committees.
Until last week, I was in a minority of one in arguing that Mr Paulson was personally responsible for suddenly turning the painful but manageable credit crunch that had been grinding away 18 months in the background of the US economy into a global catastrophe. Mr Paulson's appearances on Capitol Hill, marked by the characteristic Bush-era combination of arrogance and incompetence, are turning my once-outlandish view into conventional wisdom: Henry Paulson is to finance what Donald Rumsfeld was to military strategy, Dick Cheney to geopolitics and Michael Chertoff to flood defence.
Mr Paulson may be a former chairman of Goldman Sachs, but as US Treasury Secretary he does not know what he is doing. His recent blunders, starting with the “rescue” of Fannie Mae, have triggered unintended consequences around the world, resulting in the death-spiral of financial values. But last Friday Mr Paulson outdid even these Rumsfeldian achievements, when he demanded $700 billion from Congress for a “comprehensive and fundamental” solution to the global financial crisis, without apparently having any idea of what he would actually do.
The good news - before I return to the perils of Mr Paulson - is that his blunders no longer matter very much. There will still be a huge US government bank bailout, which will probably avert a disastrous slump in the US and global economies. But because Mr Paulson has lost the political initiative, this bailout will now be led by the Democratic leadership in Congress and will be structured around its priorities - relief from mortgage foreclosures, restrictions on bankers' pay and big government shareholdings in US banks. For President Bush it is a disaster, dashing his last faint hope of having a tangible achievement to his name before he leaves office.
How did things come to such a pass? When Mr Paulson announced his $700 billion “plan” last Friday, everybody in the financial world (myself included) heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, it seemed, the US Government was going to do whatever it takes to stabilise the world financial system. The universal assumption was that Mr Paulson would present a detailed plan of action over the weekend, putting a safety net under the value of homes, mortgages and related assets. Yet all that appeared by Saturday evening was a three-page legislative outline, with no hint of the mechanisms to be used. The only substantive clause in the draft was a swaggering demand for untrammelled power: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to this Act are non-reviewable and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
When further details of the Paulson plan failed to appear on Sunday it was assumed that the details were being untangled in late-night political negotiations. When there was still no plan on Monday, the view was that Mr Paulson must be holding back the details for his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee the following day. But then, to everyone's astonishment, Mr Paulson turned up to the committee on Tuesday morning with only the briefest opening statement, which simply repeated what he had already said the week before: the sky was falling and the only way to stop it was to give him authority over $700 billion in public money, to be spent in unspecified ways.
And suddenly the sky did fall down - not on the world economy, but on Mr Paulson. Consider the reactions from American politicians, including Republicans: “Stunning and unprecedented in its lack of detail”... “a $700 billion blank cheque to Wall Street”... “neither workable nor comprehensive”... “foolish waste of massive taxpayer funds”... “eerily similar to the rush to war in Iraq”. Best of all was John McCain's comment: “When we're talking about a trillion dollars of taxpayer money, ‘trust me' just isn't good enough.”
At first, nobody could quite believe Mr Paulson was incompetent. Was it really possible that the Treasury Secretary had no idea of what to do with this unprecedented financial firepower? Perhaps his silence on crucial issues such as what he would pay for the banks' “troubled assets” was just a tactical ruse.
But as the cross-examination rolled on, and Mr Paulson just waffled - “we will ask experts to advise us”, “we will get the best and brightest financiers to suggest ideas” - the terrible truth dawned. There was no such thing as a Paulson plan. Not only did Mr Paulson not know what he was doing. He did not know what he was talking about. When pressed to offer at least some basic principles for his rescue, Mr Paulson had no answers. When challenged about limits to executive remuneration and taxpayer stakes in future profits of participating banks, he brusquely rejected all such proposals - on the amazing ground that they might discourage some of the stronger banks from taking advantage of government support!
Could he really be so clueless? Surely not. Why, then, has Mr Paulson failed? His inability to think seriously about solutions to the present financial crisis probably has deep ideological roots. Just as Mr Rumsfeld could simply not believe that US foreign policy might be misguided, Mr Paulson simply cannot believe that markets can be fundamentally wrong. He therefore cannot imagine, for example, that government judgments about the value of bank securities may, in some circumstances, reflect economic realities more accurately than market prices. Since some such recognition of market failure is fundamental to any understanding of banking crises, it is not surprising that Mr Paulson finds it difficult to come up with a credible solution.
The ideological pendulum is now swinging but what is needed to avoid future crises is not necessarily more regulation. It is better-quality regulation, managed by people who understand and respect markets but do not worship them. Markets are usually right, but sometimes they are dangerously wrong - and they need to be managed with decisive and competent government intervention.
The people who do not understand the role of government should not be regulating markets any more than they should be fighting wars or managing flood defences. P.J.O'Rourke, the conservative writer, once remarked: “The Republicans are a party that says government doesn't work - and then get elected and prove it.” This should be the epitaph for the Bush Administration - and Mr Paulson.

Auntie Bettie forever

Between the marvellous people of Vermont many remained in my heart for different reasons,
but a special place must go to her. The unique.. Auntie Bettie.. there is no picture of her on this post, because she was the atmosphere, the peace, the place, the house in which she lives, you'll see video evidence later on... yes yes.. I'll be banging on about this trip for a while.

Anyhow, like anything in this holiday, I didn't know what to expect...
So we leave the hippy/happy farm to go to the aunt ( well the auntie bettie name, was my creation)
Hop we cross the river



to arrive at her wonderful house, where I snatched some pictys as if a was in a museum...





The lunch was delightful, had the first tortilla soup ever and it was delicious, to be prepared again. Must be said that Auntie Bettie also had a swimming pool in the middle of nature...

I want to live there.. and travel to the apple factory!




Then we all left the porch and the lovely museum house to go and welcome the first male in the house.. ( well after the groom) and auntie bettie gave us a couple of old wistles to do it in style. Even the train station was cute.

This seems made for me

this number 17 is starting to piss me off

17:17 voicemal
sorry they chose to hire a trader not you, give me a call if you would like to discuss further

I won't need any help to write a resignation letter

Went to see a Gerhard Richter opening, 4900 colours. Yes mesmerizing, also Frank Gehry's pavillion at night time and at a second look, looks a masterpiece.
Killed my sorrows in the beauty of art and cycling through London on my new bike ( yes I'm learning to love it, still haven't learnt my way around, but that will come).
M bought me flowers and tidied up all the house for me. That I didn't deserve, but it was an amazing gesture.

No dreams of my new job, stuck in that shit. Tomorrow another day, still no time or money to repair the heating or hot water, duvet is back on the bed.
I'll think of Vermont and dream.

Armageddon? No mum Goldman complained

WHAT GOES UP MUST NOT COME DOWN- THE FINANCIAL MARKET VIAGRA..

Woke up this morning, 

it looked like Armageddon, it was dark and cold this morning and I must say was still drunk from last night.. because yes I needed a drink. Wanted to say goodbye to the tots before the italian adventures and wanted to dance a bit. 

Arrive in the office.....and guess what? 

As mummy Goldman was upset that people made her stock go below 100$ she called the Fed & the treasury and all her rich friends and said.... you have to stop this..  

as I said in previous posts, in Sicily they kill you for less.

Guess what did they do after that? 

- They stopped people from short selling financial stocks.... i.e.  you can only buy them, or to be clearer it's now illegal to sell if you don't have the stock first...

So if you are short what do you do? you buy and if you are long and you can't sell what do you do?

you buy

- They also stopped money market funds from going below 1$ and  causing money market mayhem

Every possible equity index rallied the most in history!  the ftse the most since inception in 1954, the minisp was halted for trading as limited up, every single stock got halted because was going up to quickly

and guess what.. mummy goldman went up 50% today ( or at least at one point) 

But that wasn't enough... the Treasury decided to step up in buying mortgages.. 

ABSOLUTELY ridicolous.. 

"moral hazard"  - this is destruction of freedom.. this is 

a) absurd

b) it is basically saying - take as much risk as you want we bail you out

c) unfair ( because if you really wanted to organise this massive scale joke, why there are those poor lehman employees in the street ? why did you not do this earlier? 

d) they just killed lots of hedge funds that are based on arbitrage

e) made the option market illiquid because who on earth we'll make you a price if they have to hedge against an index and not against a stock

f) it's dictatorship

g) kills freedom of judgment, if you believe a company is managed badly you sell as well as you buy when you think it's well managed. It's like giving all kids a+ ( like they do at a levels in England)

I can probably arrive to z. I agree that like in every financial discussion, you can take the opposite view and think that this was right and preserved the remaining wealth instead of killing the system, but think about this

no hedge funds, no profit for banks. who they gonna sell their crap to ? the original norwegian pension fund that bought the cdo of the cdo? forget it

no ripping people off no profit

and preserved the wealth of who exactly? 

this made the rich richer and the poor homeless

and with the money of the poor.. because you think that the big swinger have got money sitting around in a cash account at Halifax? no they are in some deserted island with no tax and they pay less taxes than a fiat employee

ridicolous. 

the problem is not solved.. it's just shifted.. 

and... 

after all.. why do you think that people were selling goldman stocks? 

they wanted them to pay for destroying the other banks, as they were the ones selling the stocks and at the same time driving cds of the same names through the roof.. 

and guess who adviced on this bailout plan? 

Goldman and Pimco.. 

Lehman should sue the Fed. This is fascism. 

Today was also quadruple witching i.e. a day very well know for massive share drops as indeces, futures on them, options on them and everything expires. 

Hope all the people that exercise their options and get the stock will sell it on Monday to stop this joke.. 

For you blog readers it's ok.. your bank account is safe.. you might not be able to have 20 credit cards, but only 3 as there are about 3 banks left after this, but hey.. you can sleep well because stocks are rallying.. and mind you.. nothing absolutely nothing has changed since yesterday.. 

with all that, but midday it was also sunny in london ( apparently the Fed  can buy the sun too) 

The Fed however didn't give a job to the poor Lehman employees which lost everything they had, didn't replenish the pensions of normal people just taught many that there is no point in learning.. you just need to know people.. 

Therefore parents to be.... make sure you are rich enough before you have a kid, if you can't buy your kid expensive friends, either you live happy in a hippy family or just don't do it. 

It has been proven to me than money don't make happyness, that the hippy family exist and all, but really even there, why did the hippy family have to sell part of the beautiful place that they created if not for lack of money?

Disgusted.. but I think today really convinced me that truly really and beyond you have to use your intelligence to manipulate people.

From monday  anybody can be in banking, you just have to tell people... buy stocks, they can only go up... 10 years from now.. we will be studying why there is a bubble.. they will create new products. 

So charity people.. go ask goldman for money.. if they have a inch of heart left have to ridistribute in some way. I bet bars will make fortunes and we will read that somebody has been tipped 10000$ dollar or one of those goldman w@nkers have paid 50k for bj, while probably some of the lehman employees will just jump off a roof.. Why them? It wasn't timing... 

After all today was Lloyd Blankfein's ( ceo of GS) 54th Birthday and the Treasury wanted to apoologies for making him cry last night.. 

he real secret to Goldman's Success, has just been demonstrated. If you don't like the rule, ignore it until inconvenient then change it intermittently so nobody every quite knows what the fuck is going. The quietly big a hole out back, and dump all your shitty assets in it.

on another note.. Hillary might still be in for vice presidency.. if this happens.. I'll explain you why... some of you got my email today..

 but just to prove how many fucking idiots there are in the financial world.. here is another story, which got lost in the middle of the mayhem

the government-owned KfW bank sent funds to Lehman on the same day it filed for bankruptcy
“Germany’s Dumbest Bank,” were the headlines on the newspapers..

PREORDER NOW... you don't want to be left without

PREORDER NOW

DAYS OF GRACE THE MASTERPIECE


if you are quick I get you a signed copy!

and the financial meltdown continues

and the apple factory looks so more likely my next job!
Oh well..
Don't say I didn't tell you!
I thought all this all along, but hey, didn't make me rich ( actually I lost 90% on the shit shares they gave me and more to be accrued on the ones I that didn't even vest yet!)
actually it made me more frustrated, many people lost a job, some didn't deserve it, the ones that did, clearly found a new one just because they know somebody
and the saga continues.. the irony is , now I do actually work 14 hours a day for achieving no money and maybe keeping my job
if my company wasn't a joke already, it just got bought ( we don't know yet ) by some company which is even more shit with a ceo which will regret more than his sins having a dream of being a hero..
anyhow.. while typing another ( the biggest insurance company in the world might have been left to go bankrupt)
apple factory here I come!

Restore the breeding barn.... have a little cell for us.. where babies can stroke us and they can even guess ( which poo are you?)

let's get down to business.. TATIANA

Saturday night... Brighton Beach... I think the best word to describe the ride there, the place, the atmosphere and all the rest.. is SURREAL

First of all.. some of us were dressed as Pimps with bling... some other bought hen night presents... many just arrived very late...

yes I know what happens in brighton beach stays in brighton beach, but still... some pictys are totally needed..
the place was a posh restaurant for russians ( which I think are totally nuts) - the food was amazing, the vodka was flowing.. but the show was definetely the cherry!












Just had this memory of somebody singing a song in Russian or something with an old guy playing... 

But let's conclude with Tony Manero on rising stage and the lampshade

and back to the shit normal life

oh God... what a difference makes... 

Back home, heating needs to be flushed  (1000£ ) lights blew up, stock market crashing, one less investment bank in there, another 2 waiting to go and with that my job too. 

Only highlights of the week were

 a fabolous dinner ( hosted by me) with invaluable contribution of lovely M&M without them 

would not have been possible... thank you love you both dearly. 

and the Soros and Alain de Botton talk - inspiring

Now it's friday night, too exhausted to go out, to depressed to think. So... let's remember the jolly good times of heaven- i.e. the past week. What a wonderful experience.... 

Let's start from NYC, still not convinced I could really live there but hey! those 3 days were amazing ... 

Funnily enough... look what I found in the picture collection... and probably what would really remain of it very soon


And you can already buy Lehman parafernalia on Ebay ( just to remember the old times) !

The best week of my life

and.... Bucolic it was.. 

The most amazing place I have ever been to, the most amazing people and the most beautiful holiday of my entire life.
I haven't complained despite becoming St Lazzarus after mosquitos attack and despite spraining my ankle. 
I don't know where to start either... as I have 500 pictures in my camera... ready to be downloaded and I'm sure another 5000 on the go.. the housemates had to even buy a new hard-drive to store all the evidence.
There are no highlights, every single moment of it was wonderful.. and the wedding... wish any couple such a wonderful wedding..

I even woke up early and run two mornings in a row
I'm still weeping, I don't get nostalgic when I leave Sicily, but I cried when I left Vermont.

I could probably live picking apples, peeling them and making apple pies.. 

But back to reality... 1 hr queue at Paddington, no hot water as my boiler decided to break once again and.... workkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk ( the dreaded evil).

Photos will come.. once iphoto stops crashing....

but no worries.. I'll bang on to this for at least 10 posts... ( I'll make you beg for depressing posts!)   

U.S.A be ready I'm coming

And me too I will be in the bucolic surrounding of Vermont... 

Who will crack first?  

The challenge :  

PC obsessed vs Me

I haven't been to the States for quite a while now, not sure a lot has changed, but all my friends report back highly and they would actually consider swapping NY for London.

The way I see the States ( still open to be surprised on this trip ) as opposed to Sicily is the way you are brought up.

In Sicily, if you see somebody doing something he shouldn't, authorises you to do it as well.

In the States, if you see somebody doing something he shouldn't you report it, so nobody else will ever do it again. 

If you report it in Sicily ( even in kindergarten, all the kids will circle you and they'll start chanting... Chi fa la spia non e' figlio di Maria ( meaning, he who spies is not the son of the Madonna) 

Cultures... Let's face it... if I was born American I would have probably been electrocuted by now. Which really wouldn't have been a bad option either.

Waiting.. waiting for godot

Yup! always waiting for something that never materialises.. 

They are not dreams, you can't write a little letter to father Xmas to send things to you also because father Xmas only comes down chimneys and I only have a stupid fig tree

yes yes I know.. you can make things happens.

I know you couldn't care less. I know you will always remain of your opinion, I know you think I'm wrong and blablabla.. 

Birth? Coincidence? Luck...
X grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and counts among his ancestors, a rogue colonist who, in 1676, launched an unauthorized attack on Indians that briefly led to his controlling most of Virginia. His father, ran the North Carolina real estate operations of both Prudential and later Merrill Lynch & Co. When his father eventually remarried, it was to the sister of a man who was fast becoming a Wall Street legend: Julian Robertson.
He is the middle of three sons. His brothers,  graduated from local public schools, he, in his junior year, ventured out of town enrolling in preppy Episcopal High School, by coincidence Robertson's alma mater. Students at Episcopal were expected to work hard and had to sit in study hall during free periods and evenings. Only in the afternoon did they get a few hours outdoors, to play football or other sports. He didn't seem to mind. One afternoon I passed through study hall, and there was him, grinding away, recalls Lee Ainslie Jr., the former Episcopal headmaster and father of Lee Ainslie III, manager of the $4.5 billion Maverick Capital hedge funds. Most other boys would have been happy to be outdoors playing.

An aficionado of Ernest Hemingway and Nathaniel Hawthorne, he cultivated his love of the outdoors in the bucolic surroundings of Vermont. Southerners at Middlebury stuck out like sore thumbs, recalls classmate Christopher Brady, who heads money management and advisory firm Chart Group and is the son of former Treasury secretary Nicholas Brady. He hunted a lot, skiied incessantly and studied.
Still, there were some early signs of the future financier: During the summers following his sophomore and junior years, He worked as a clerk for New York Stock Exchange specialist Walter N. Frank & Co. and met Frank after working on his deep-sea charter fishing boat off Montauk, Long Island, during the summer of 1976.
An early influence was Paul Tudor Jones, who was sharing an apartment with Charles Johnson, a former roommate of Zack Bacon's at the University of North Carolina. Jones, who had started out as a cotton trader, was then working as a commodities broker with E.F. Hutton.
He soon headed off to get his MBA at Columbia University, where he used his student loan as capital to continue to trade. To his chagrin, he lost it all - and had to work odd jobs to make up the difference.
From this experience, he learned how to handle risk, he landed at Shearson Lehman Hutton in 1983 as a futures broker, trading on behalf of some of the biggest names in the hedge fund world. For a 27-year-old, he deployed a powerful Rolodex. Jones and brother Zack, who deployed landed at Soros Fund Management as head trader, threw plenty of business his way. He quickly became a top commission producer.
He was very fortunate to be right in the middle of that network, notes Charles Stockley, president of Stockley Asset Management, a futures trading firm, and a childhood friend of Jones's. You can't say that his career is a story of someone starting at the bottom and clawing his way up. But he took the ball and ran with it, and ultimately he surpassed them all.
His gilt-edged client list had another advantage, in addition to the hefty commissions: By trading on behalf of Soros and Jones, he learned their investing styles.
By 1986 he had acquired enough of a reputation to start managing other peoples' money. The following year, while still at Shearson, he set up a small fund . Right off he hit a home run. He correctly anticipated the stock market crash, going short S&P futures and then shifting to a long position just as the market bottomed.
By the end of the decade, he had established a strong track record, and he decided to move to a bigger stage

That first year, the fund was up 86 percent, thanks largely to his decision to short the Nikkei index just before the Japanese markets collapsed. He also anticipated Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and went short stocks and long oil.
As he set out to raise more money, his task was made easier by his friendship with Jones, who had decided to close his funds to new money. In a letter to investors, Jones recommended they invest spare capital with him. Jones also introduced him to Busson, who had helped him raise money in Europe. 

The story is for me and it's not for you.. also because you get bored of reading things like this I omitted some pieces and some names.

It's not luck... it's not coincidence... yes you have to be great, but somebody has to give you a chance... 

Waiting to hear what's the excuse this time.. 

I close my day with some thoughts

The world appreciates more people that recycle and donate to charity than people that respect others. 

Wish one single individual in this planet could understand that diplomacy it only serves the purpose of using your intellect to manipulate people. 

I offer them the choice to say no, I give them the opportunity to have their opinions. 

However that's wrong, because human kind prefers to be manipulated and pushed to do something, as long as that's done in a nice way.

That's an additional reason why there is no reason for the existence of human kind on planet earth. 

You can now use a service so that their phone calls don't reach a number but manipulate the system so that you can just leave a message into the answer phone, that's for people which haven't got the courage to say what they think not even on the phone. 

As people only like nice unchallenging people a new software has been developed and you can't even tell that's not a real human, it's just a nice smiling good looking diplomatic one ( i.e. the equivalent to the hologram that speaks in front of you).

Diplomacy can be replaced by a computer, thinking and opinions can't. 

But that's just a point of view, which will never be shared by unthinking individuals.  

I was born turbated and I will die deluded. Doesn't matter, I can't change the world because I'm fair, people rather have Hitler burning them alive.

He made history after all. 

Gina home alone

Errrrrrrrrrr.

11.10 : Hello... Anna... lights blew up. There is no light in 1/4 of the house.. including the fridge.. the braciolettine will defrost, what will I do with the meat?

11.12 Mum... I have been living in the house for nearly 3 years and that has never happened to me. Also... just 1/4 of the house? How is that possible? 

Let's rewind.. Where did you clean? What did you open? 

11.15 Nothing nothing nothing

well to make a story short, she manages to short circuit a part of the house while attempting to charge her mobile phone. How that's possible... not sure really!

Thanks to John ( the caretaker of the building, which loves me due to my slitty eyes connection and because when he used to have the keys of my flat used to perve on M's seminaked pictures from the photoshoot )

Anyhow.. Gina made him coffee, he switched the light back on. Bless him

15:00  ring ring  .... I found the brush ( that's to clean the carpet) how do you say flour in english? 

19:00 back home- 

there are objects on the shelves as they looked empty and M's scarf is properly ironed and packaged in a little plastic sleeve - because you know, Gina lives in that world in which in the morning, before wearing a scarf you remove it from the plastic unfold it and wear it, at night time you fold it and replace it in the bag

Come come... look what I bought? beautiful, useful... ( it's a brush to clean the floor on the balcony) I wonder how I lived without one till now

Gina bought Heinz tomato soup instead of chopped tomatoes, flour  ( which I already had) 

the nevermissable crisps ( the crunchy ones... ) 

I really don't know if my mum is like I'll be as an old woman, or as the creature I will put in the world. I think after this experience, I really learnt that no I haven't got the patience for it. 

Clearly.. as she hasn't talked all day... we have already touched the world domination the 100 rules of cleaning and the principles of cooking. 

She also said she hasn't stopped for one sec. Do you know what? I believe her. 

- I don't find these drawers suitable to keep cooking pans

- you should have allowed me to send you the sitting steps ( i.e. a small ladder which can be used as a seat) so she could reach the top shelves

- How do you clean the gas bits?? 

If I had a calculator to know how many carbon emissions she generated by using cleaning products I think will be more than a flight to NY. 

Tomorrow I'll hang a stepcount to her belt... let's see how many steps can she go through in a day in the house. I buy 10k 

Saturday: Wycombe - the caves and the trekking tour

Thanks to Diana for  the patience, the choice of trek and for spending a day with Gina and me. 

I must say it was wonderful. As you could see from previous post.. not enough to tire Gina but it was wonderful to see her happy and not complaining. She even said : You could not have chosen a better day! Bliss... what happened to that bliss only god knows.. 

As the original plan of walking 16km was "too easy" for her, she started the walk with a jog!

Sorry forgot the photographic evidence of today

When I say... it's like having a kid.. I'm not kidding

I also forgot ( not sure how... to recount the amazing day we had yesterday in the countryside...) but photos of that and full story to follow- yes.. yesterday was a wonderful day with Gina and Diana, but today everything got wiped out. I'm now certain that Gina suffers from ADD and that must be hereditary ( not sure that's an english word)