Scottish Labour Facing Annihilation

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Scottish Labour Facing Annihilation

The SNP is looking at a 14.5% swing towards them in Scotland on the basis of the YouGov / PolitcsHome super-poll of the marginals. That will wipe Scottish Labour out. Gordon will achieve the annihilation of the Labour Party in his homeland for a generation. Could that be why Luke Akehurst's"We Don't Want a Labour Leadership Election" Facebook group had a flood of non-Labour Party applicants? Luke has revoked Guido's membership and blocked new members, spoilsport...

Market Mayhem Watch: Fear and Greed

Guido can't resist and is now actively trading once again in financial markets, attracted by the blood on the streets of New York and London. The approach is old fashioned, none of that quantitative analysis using super-computers that you need to lose billions. Just two or three positions on the go at any one time, mainly restricted to financial futures, foreign exchange and commodities rather than individual stocks. Have an aversion to trading stocks because insiders (or friends of Robert Peston) can kill you if you are leveraged - given portfolio leverage varies from none to 20 times - it is essential to employ stop losses. Will report how the portfolio is doing in percentage terms (in the right hand column) as of Tokyo market opening this morning. Because of the leverage employed swings of 20% are not unheard of - unfortunately that is usually on a bad day. Mark to market since this morning's open is +4% largely on the back of another FTSE short .

Will probably keep the reporting going until this period of extreme disequilibrum in the markets is over or the portfolio is down 50% or up 100%. It will be an interesting experiment to keep a public trading diary.

Rich & Mark's Monday Morning View

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2008

Marr Does the Usual

"Is it fair to say that the country.....and the economy have been let down by people in the city?" "So why is that if you've made the right decisions and the Tories have made the wrong decisions do the polls not reflect this?" .... and so on and so on. Even when Brown told complete lies like "we have reduced debts", Marr remains mute.

Jeff Randall on Sky really laid into Brown this week when he tried to pull his usual line in "Brownies", not that it made much difference, Brown just stuck to his lines. The viewer was able to make up their mind who to believe. Marr really should stick to reporting, his interviews are pathetic.

Gordon seemed to be testing out a new line, that he had been telling all the other finance ministers (who were not as brilliant and as far-seeing as him) that we need a global regulator for years. One that would allow 125% mortgages, not monitor liquidity and wrench the central bank away from the government debt markets. If only the Americans had listened to him...