Thursday, 2 October 2008


THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2008

Evil Short Sellers Part IV - MPs' Pension Funds

There was a little union sponsored demo in Birmingham against "Cameron's cronies cashing in on the credit crunch" organised by Charlie Wheelan. Unfortunately they seem to have missed out on the biggest short seller of Bradford and Bingley. None other than his old crony Paul Myners' GLG Partners. Brown's favourite financier, donor and deputy chairman of the Smith Institute, as well as Gordon's personal financial backer during the leadership campaign.

GLG partners declared to the FSA the largest short position in the market, the massive hedge fund profited the most from being short Bradford and Bingley before it went under. If Charlie's dozen strong rent-a-crowd don't fancy demonstrating outside GLG's City offices they could try demonstrating outside the Guardian's offices. Myners is also chairman of the Guardian's holding company.

Labour has also taken £1 million from Jon Aisbitt, non-executive chairman of Man Group, Britain's biggest quoted hedge fund group. Derek Tullet, who made his money providing derivatives broking services to hedge funds, also sent £400,000 into Labour's coffers.

Guido has already pointed out that one of the LibDems biggest backers, Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace, is an evil short seller with no less than three of his funds on the FSA's register of short sellers.

It gets even better, the FT has discovered that MPs' own pensions are invested in a hedge fund manager, Quellos. Not only that, in addition the MPs' pension fund also made money lending stocks out to hedge funds to enable them to short shares. The hypocrisy is huge here, they condemn short sellers publicly and yet they roll up the profits of short selling in their pension plans.

The Sun Shines on Dave

The Sun has made the shift. "He's ready" says this morning's leader, "This speech could have been lifted straight from a Sun editorial — from backing Our Boys on the front-line to mending Britain’s broken society. ."

It also has a dig at the Robinson / Crick line of reporting "Is he up to the job? The Labour-leaning BBC was not impressed . . . always a good sign."Clearly the deal is sealed as far as Murdoch is concerned, he has decided Dave is going to win.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2008

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It was fun.