Hedge funds have got one major advantage over bent bookies. In their case, race fixing is entirely above board. Let me expand on this point, by way of an analogy for what has been happening in the Irish, Greek, Portuguese and Italian economies of late.
Let’s say you take a bet on a horse to lose the Grand National, something that those of us who do the gees gees know as a ‘lay bet’. But in this case, you get access to the paddock, and have every opportunity to bribe the jockey or dope the nag. You can even throw ball bearings, or perhaps the odd suffragette, under its hooves once it is on the track. Continue reading
After yesterday’s champagne-popping as the FTSE-100 rolled past the 6,000 mark, share prices surged, and the Tory press hailed the New Year as the turning point of recovery, comes the cold truth of the next day’s dawn. There is a very real risk that a febrile recovery in the UK-US will be killed off by sharply rising commodity prices reflecting an inauspicious conjuncture of climate change impacts, unusually cold weather and fast-rising demand in Asia. It will push up CPI inflation, and if that triggers a rise in interest rates, all bets are off.