Barring Disaster, Will I get to the turd end of the credit crunch ?

Well of course its not, there will be lots more pain for most even remotely connected with any part of the finance industry. But it also seems to me there will be even more to come for others with no ties whatsoever to any part of the finance industry. Why ? Well I mentioned an unbelievable statistic back in 2005, in an article for gamedevelopers.ie : the stat: "two thirds of financial markets are made up of speculation - only one third is actual trade." It was glossed over at the time really, but in that context, i.e. prior to the sub-prime collapse and recent era of energy inflation, it was still a shocking aspect to learn concerning the nature of 'the system'.

Does the fed and the US treasury secretary today really believe that pumping lots of borrowed cash into such a fundamentally flawed system will, while suspending only selective forms of speculation (short selling), positively contribute to solving matters, restoring confidence, reducing fear, fix things, prevent further failure. - make it all go way ?

I'm simply not an expert on global finance by any stretch of anyone's imagination, although I might just be financially simple ! but a very clever and intelligent friend of mine Jo, who worked at the FT for a while, introduced me to that staggering statistic over dinner one evening in Leicester.

Jo went off home to London, I to Ireland and back into the middle of the housing and greed boom. Having a chat with a couple of biz accountant / auditor / investment / wealth management gents later that same week, my newly learned statistic was laughed away as I discovered CFDs (Contracts For Difference) and other speculative financial instruments available to someone like me, an average Joe type. Not only were Wall street traders and finance professionals adding fuel to the speculation fire, gobshites on modest incomes like mine could join the party for as little as 10K (the average monthly rise in home values we were being told by auctioneers and our own little band of greed merchants back home in the green sod)

I concede I have no respect for money, it is merely a tool like any other tool, if your over-worked and flat out friend finally opens their garage door to reveal to you one million hammers and screwdrivers of various sizes and shapes, would you begin to fear for their sanity? if the tool was cash, would concern get replaced by respect for their dedication, industry, invention with awe and admiration. Illustrative of the complexity of individual perceptions of money, if only in terms of our current materially orientated, money obsessed society. The vast majority on less than a dollar a day have only a multimillionaire spokesman paddy rock star as their voice - lyrical perhaps but admittedly very very odd indeed. Yet as an almost last in the team schoolyard pick, it's accepted, we'll have the guy who sound's like a dog biscuit.

So we've had a couple of false endings to the credit crunch, two I count so far, now we're at the third / turd - that particular end of the stick that the average, working, non finance professional person will without any doubt end up holding. (As usual)

In their wisdom, a rescue package will mean unprecedented generational debt for America - forget Hitler, bin laden, world wars, hurricane's, the finance system that is another good ole boy network and it's greed has surpassed all previous moral low points and now the trillions worth of debt will be given to every American's future child. It's not really perplexing at all as to why there is a major rush to get the whole thing through congress.

ten for that ? you must be mad ! Palin.

Sometimes famous actors slide from big to small screens and turn human, resulting in words, images, their real persona and their various professional images colliding, When Michael Palin found himself in the vicinity of any object for sale in any one of his excellent travel documentary series, (too many of which I watched I could mention just see his wikipedia entry) his immortal post haggling Monty python line above, would shot across my dendrites and cause an internal titter.

Similarly I often found it difficult to suspend my disbelief in relation to the character of Jason Bourne, hard to take him 100% seriously, not because of a poor performance or sub standard production, on the contrary I generally enjoyed the series, it was just that somewhere in my subconscious a Philip Pullman novel kept my imagination wondering about the lineage of the main actor, a potential for his shadow to be another shadow but today Matt turned very real and he shoots from the hip about another Palin: