Time and date

There are some things which I simply refuse to understand- one of them is the concept of daylight savings time.

I knew that last night, the clocks were turned back an hour, to take us back into winter time. But still, today, I was quite surprised to find that the clock on my laptop said 10:30, while the regular clock said 11:30, and it took me a brief second to remind myself to set the wall-clock correctly.

I've heard explanations about the need to save energy being the driving force to convince whole nations to adopt this timely exercise (trying to make a PJ there, in case you didn't get it!). But I'm not buying it. Most people here end up working long hours anyway, so how are we saving any energy? All the offices in Canary Wharf are lit up all night, when nobody's working; so where's the energy saving? In the US, Mountain time follows daylight savings, except the Navajo nation (excluding the Hopis in Navajo nation who do follow daylight savings). Confusing? Good, that was the objective.

Just leave the clocks be!

Where is the free-market?

OPEC countries today agreed to cut oil production to keep oil prices from falling further. Where is the capitalism, the free-market that is supposed to create the efficiency. Oil producing countries ganging up to decide how much to produce to keep prices at a higher level than the market demand is, to my mind, nothing but price-fixing.

How is it correct that price-fixing is fair when it comes to oil, but in a normal trade context, it is seen as an unfair, restrictive trade practice. Why should we as consumers pay a higher price than necessary for transport, heating etc the prices of all of which are heavily affected by the oil prices.

Who's paying for it?

It's been such a crazy time, that wherever I turn, people are talking about which firm's losing money. Today, I read 2 articles on Bloomberg News- one about the IMF helping out Pakistan to avoid it defaulting, and another about a potential default by Argentina for the second time in a decade. Makes one wonder about country risk. If in this global economy, there is relatively freer flow of capital, then eveyry country across the world is invested either directly or indirectly in the sub-prime/ credit crisis. So, while the carry trade was at the peak of being lucrative, firms were borrowing in Japan to invest in high-rish, high-return assets. So, there's a whole lot of money that Japan has lent to non-Japanese debtors. At what point will Japan get up and say, 'okay, party's over; time to repay those pesky borrowings'? Or will Japan have to keep throwing good money after bad to keep firms/countries afloat so that they'll make enough money elsewhere to repay the yen borrowings? What about China- I had heard enough about how China is squeezing the world economy and can potentially bring it to its knees imply by selling some ABS. As I heard it, all these CDOs and CDO^2s were being bought by Chinese investors, who now had leveraged so much that its was in their best interests to keep the markets afloat, until such time as the government decided to squeeze the Western governments. This certainly makes for a lively conspiracy theory, which a lot of people would probably wager on considering the current state of the world economy and how it's the Chinese, Japanese and Singaporean banks that are keeping the market afloat. Conspiracy theory anyone?

Banking humor turning into gallows humor

Last week, with the problems in Iceland, I thought CNBC and Bloomberg TV had gone into overdrive talking about "meltdown in Iceland".

But, reading 'thelondonpaper' on the DLR on the way home, I realised that the wry gallows humor is all around:


Some examples, from thelondonpaper:
How many commodity traders do you need to change a lightbulb?
None- they won't do it. But, the price of darkness will shoot up due to over-supply.

What is the definition of optimism?
A banker ironing five shirts on a Sunday.

Uncertainty in the banking markets in Japan- the Origami bank has folded up, Sumo bank has gone belly up and shares in Kamikaze bank have nosedived.

The Isle of Dogs banking society has gone bust. They're calling in the retrievers.

Masked man holding a gun to a cashier in a bank: "I don't want any money. Just start lending to each other."

On a fresh note...

So here goes....a brand-new effort to start up my blog. I had 2 versions of my old blog, first on Wordpress and then on blogger. Wordpress decided to delete my blog for becoming dormant. I deleted the Blogger blog. So, I was talking to my brother yesterday and decided to restart my blog.


While I figure out what to write, go read my brother's blog- http://www.silentyak.com/