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ISSUE #20 - Wednesday, 29th October 2008
- Robert Peston, BBC News
"Hedge funds and VW: what a pile up!"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008/10/hedge_funds_and_vw_what_a_pile.html
DJR's gist: Germany, as a generalisation, dislikes the financial services sector that Britain and London took so lovingly to its very heart. "Products" such as derivatives and "positions" involving short selling and dubious financing were seen as being "like a plague of locusts over our companies, [they] devour everything, then fly on to the next one". So it was with some satisfaction that they must have watched short-sellers get bare-face raped by Volkswagen's spectacular stock price boom - gaining 95% in value and ending the day as the largest company in the world. The surprise of the announcement by Porsche (see article) has generated terrific losses, which for many people is absolutely hilarious. Not for hedge fund managers though... but they've got their work cut out if they want any sympathy over in the Motherland.
See also: Stephen J. Dubner, "Freakonomics" blog, The New York Times
"The Most Valuable Company in the World Today Is..."
- Will Doig, The Daily Beast
"Has Obama Already Won?"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-29/has-obama-already-won
DJR's gist: The levels of early voting seen in this year's US Presidential elections is unprecedented, and will almost certainly change the concept of "election day" forever. The sheer volume of voters has left voting stations inundated for days - there is no way they'd be able to handle such demand if concentrated in one day. Consensus is that early voting helps Barack Obama, but a good point to consider is that if all the Democrats vote early, next Tuesday could be eerily quiet in terms of Democrat numbers.
- Adam Boulton, "Boulton & Co", Sky News
"US Election: Who's The Stupid One?"
http://blogs.news.sky.com/boultonandco/Post:d6ec1a49-133d-43df-80f9-3973cbb1089f
DJR's gist: I couldn't agree more with Boulton about this. We, in Britain, sit watching the American political process with a mixture of condescension and disbelief. But while they're actually arguing over issues that will affect their future leader, we've got our two most important politicians talking about "some offensive and smutty phonecalls made a couple of vulgar celebrities" through the medium of the BBC. Sure, action needs to be taken (and has been), but involving the PM? Seriously?
- Jack Schofield, The Guardian
"Vista's successor is more than Windows dressing"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/oct/30/microsoft-windows7
DJR's gist: "Windows 7", the new version of Windows that is likely to be released by this time next year, is going to offer a lot more than a mere fine-tuning of Vista. With the product now in the hands of thousands of hardware developers, Microsoft are looking to iron out the strategic issues that caused Vista's slow start. It is also interesting to note that Microsoft is seemingly returning to its formula from the late 1990s, where new versions of Windows were successively released from 3.1 to 95, 98, Me and XP. After 7 years of XP as standard, it may come as a surprise to people who've recently bought Vista PCs to discover that they're OS is going to be old news very soon.
See also: Wikipedia - Windows 7
- Nick Leys, The Sunday Telegraph (Australia)
"Coogee Bay Hotel in Sydney 'served human faeces in ice cream'"
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24552137-1242,00.html
DJR's gist: This one comes from Chouders. A hotel in Sydney is being sued for up to A$1,000,000 for allegedly serving shit in a bowl to a family under the label of "chocolate ice cream". If true, it is potentially the worst bit of PR ever.
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