Capital Chronicle

Casino Capitalism: hedge it!

2012-04-19T20:02:00.001+02:00

“It is usually agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of Stock Exchanges. That the sins of the London Stock Exchange are less than those of Wall Street may be due, not so much to differences in national character, as to the fact that to the average Englishman Throgmorton Street is, compared with Wall Street to the average American, inaccessible and very expensive”

When JM Keynes wrote that in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money it is certain he was not on the lookout for a gap in the market in order to create a gambling service for every pocket.

Still, the more famous casino quote from chapter 12:

“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done”

does rest on likelihood not certainty. So with this allowance for even improbable outcomes Mr. Keynes perhaps would not be surprised that betting companies have come to resemble capital exchanges. Or miss the irony of a relative value trade hedging the two.

Here are a couple of graphs showing just how much the London Stock Exchange and the sports betting and gaming company William Hill, plc have become substitutes since the turn of the year.

These are 30 minute intra-day observations from a cointegration analysis going back to mid December 2011. Even after application of the UK’s ~~Tobin Tax~~Stamp Duty it has been a neutral and profitable trade.

But - and in keeping with the Spirit of the Times - those opposed to transaction taxes on the grounds of principle will side-step the 0.5% by using Contracts For Difference. Sold, in a neat twist, by one of William Hills’ financial market betting company competitors.

For more on Keynes and his investing methods see this excellent recent paperneatly summarised by CXO Advisory Group here.

Still time to change those francs to euros!

2012-01-18T10:05:00.000+01:00

Limited time offer, ends 17 February!

Not only have the New Year sales just kicked off in France (the dates of which are governed by legislation, an interesting curio) but you can still get a bargain for those old francs under the mattress!

You read right. Take your Pierre and Marie Curies, your Eiffels, your Cézannes and your Debussys - coins no longer accepted, navré - down to your local Banque de France and get...euros (while stocks last)! Affaire!

Who says the EFSF is illusory and circular?

LulzSec forgive us our debts (and other 2012 predictions)

2011-12-26T18:53:00.001+01:00

Debts forgiven!

In a scene reminiscent of the "adult toy" revenge scene from the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo the LulzSec hacker group declare their frustration with the rigidity of personal debt obligations that, they claim, hinder corporate investment in higher speed internet gaming infrastructure (“no one will be able to afford it if they build it”).

They launch a massive and coordinated hack of retail bank computer networks across the globe erasing household mortgage records (taking the time to digitally tattoo the word "Occupied" in all data fields) and thereby inadvertently solve a hitherto intractable piece of the global debt crisis. Until, that is, lenders restore their Fukushima-proof backup catastrophe storage systems and put Mummy and Daddy back on the debt hook.

Other natural substances overlooked

Finding the “tough love” message falling, inexplicably, on stony ground Mitt "Ten Grand" Romney hires the marketing geniuses behind Rennie heartburn medicine (“turns excess stomach acid into water and to other natural substances”) to sell the austerity/debt acid message ahead of the November election.

Incumbent President Obama, considered by many to have long drawn a veil over the “other natural substances” piece of the equation, takes a leaf from web spam methods instead with a blitz campaign of TV spots: “Solve your debt issues quick – and in all cases just after 6 November, 2012”; “Get ready for new economic feats – shortly after November 6, 2012”; “Do you wish to have the best growth of your life starting from 7 November, 2012?”

HMRC to promise ~~transparency~~ invisibility on tax deals

A stunning 11^th hour inclusion in the 2012 London summer Olympics of the popular but misunderstood sport of Corporate Tax Avoidance causes confusion when the United Kingdom's collector of taxes, HM Revenue & Customs, instead of arbitrating, enters as a contestant alongside such renown unofficial underground champions as Goldman Sachs, Vodafone and Google.

All entrants withdraw when it becomes clear that the last time pure gold was used to make Olympic winners’ medals was in 1912.

It subsequently emerges that Goldman had hedged such a result by, first, persuading Lord Coe of the 2012 Olympic Organising Committee to write Event Default Swaps as a 'riskless' source of revenue and, second, then buying up the entire contract inventory.

Thank you, China - and we mean it this time

In a remarkable show of Sino-love both the US Senate and Congress pass the “Renmimbi Manipulation Appreciation Act” officially congratulating the Chinese government for its foresight in, to quote Senator Lindsey Graham interviewed from his seaside villa in Hainan (so much more affordable than Myrtle Beach), “getting the balance right between stealing our jobs, creating massive trade-surpluses for China and then letting the renmimbi rise strongly for 2 years to levels where acquisition of our assets became a viable proposition”.

House guest ECB President Mario “Brothers” Draghi joked (well, at least a smile was on his face) that China “should not forget to also take a look at the Euro banking system for even more overpriced asset deals”.

Pouring the drinks, China’s President Hu Jintao confesses that his country has indeed been manipulating the renminbi but that he was gratified everything worked out for the common good just like Alan Greenspan said it would.

Economic Holy Grail found! Maybe...

11. Thou shall buy clothes and consumer electronics

In a long and desperately awaited development, Large Hadron Collider (LHC) economists move tantalizingly closer to detecting the elusive “God’s Work Particle”.

Formally named the Asett²⁰(bub)¹² particle it is of the mysterious “boson” type considered by incumbent policymakers key to underpinning capitalism by uniting the “capital” quark and its antiquark, "labour". The multi trillion dollar LHC was conceived to recreate the conditions immediately before the 2001 Tech Wreck and the 2009 Great Recession.

Conclusive evidence of the Asett²⁰(bub)¹²particle’s existence is expected, once again, to be prematurely announced by the IMF in July.

(Happy New Year! )

Olympus: the camera never lies...

2011-11-09T18:08:00.001+01:00

Both cloudy

Maybe the move from analogue to digital has not been so smooth after all.

One might think there could be no doubt someone, somewhere in Olympus will serve a stretch for this. However, with the former President Toshiro Shimoyama (1984 to 1993) reportedly claiming that:

"he had no memory of any loss-hiding scheme and was not closely involved in finance at the time"

there seem to be few signs of imminent seppuku. On the other hand, recent executives - younger, sharper and fully digitised on the memory front - probably do recall paying an advisory fee of $687m. It was a little over the odds. $665m over the odds according to Reuters.

There's lots of explaining to do (can't help wonder about the auditors either) but regulatory zealots might bear in mind the long precedent pre-dating even Thurlow that:

"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like."

"Investor relations", a novel. By MF Global

2011-10-31T17:10:00.002+01:00

But will it sell?

24 October: "NEW YORK, Oct 24, 2011 -- MF Global Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: MF), a broker-dealer providing trading and hedging solutions, has rescheduled the release of its fiscal second quarter 2012 financial results from Thursday, October 27, 2011 to Tuesday, October 25, 2011.(link)

25 October: "Strengthened capital and liquidity position. As of September 30, 2011, the company has over $3.7 billion in available liquidity, including $1.3 billion in available committed revolving credit facilities and $2.5 billion in total capital." (link)

"Over the course of the past year, we have seen opportunities in short-dated European sovereign credit markets and built a fully financed, laddered maturity portfolio that we actively manage. We remain confident that we have the resources and expertise to continue to successfully manage these exposures to what we believe will be a positive conclusion in December 2012," CEO Mr. Corzine (link)

28 October: "By Oct. 28, MF Global tapped the entirety of two bank lines, said three people with knowledge of the matter speaking on condition of anonymity since the move wasn’t public" (Bloomberg)

31 October: (link)

Lowlights mine.

Dexia: assume a can opener…

2011-10-10T14:40:00.000+02:00

…or at least no sovereign defaults and - presto - no problems.

Reality may be as overrated as stress test results but it tends to be expensive to ignore. €10.4 billion of expense in this case – and that’s just the price of the insurance.

The involvement of the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations has serious ramification for French residents like me: it may put an end to my wondering about curious year end spending in the commune (eg digging up the mayoral lawn and replacing a functioning sprinkler system with a new, functioning sprinkler system).

But so it is the world over when local municipalities are preparing to justify next year’s budget by demonstrating they really needed, and so used up, this year’s.

Still, where else can one have fun with ~€10.4 billion?

Brokering secret deals in Libya?
Buying a nice little tech company?
Keeping up with the neighbours’ tax policies?
Buying a few jobs ahead of elections?

Or, most relevantly in current context, kissing it goodbye.

Monkeys with guns: high frequency trading

2011-07-12T11:43:00.009+02:00

Andrew Haldane, one of the Bank of England's Executive Directors, illuminated the high frequency trading debate last week with this speech. It contains many gems such as this one:

"In some respects, this may sound like old news. For example, an evaporation of liquidity, amplified by algorithmic trading, lay at the heart of the 1987 stock market crash. And it is also well-known that stock prices exhibit non-normalities, with the distribution of asset price changes fatter-tailed and more persistent than implied by the efficient markets hypothesis at frequencies of years and months, perhaps weeks and days. But these abnormalities were thought to disappear at higher frequencies, such as hours and minutes. Over shorter intervals, efficient market pricing restored itself.

Recent studies point, however, to a changing pattern. Non-normal patterns in prices have begun to appear at much higher frequencies. A recent study by Smith (2010) suggests that, since around 2005, stock price returns have begun to exhibit fat-tailed persistence at 15 minute intervals. Given the timing, these non-normalities are attributed to the role of HFT in financial markets."

The implication is that price returns move more and more to their own frenetic, rhythm-less tune - not to that of any fundamental orchestra - and, given that prices have memory, may end up staining the landscape with additional fat-tail outcomes thereby creating new systemic risk.

Maybe - but it does so far more resemble a campus shooting spree by primates as likely to hurt themselves as genuine students. The goal of protecting those student ought alone to be enough to impose controls - without recourse to prodding awake the systemic bugbear.

Where are the customers' UN Security Council resolutions?

2011-05-31T19:03:00.007+02:00

You could not invent it:

"Libya was furious at Goldman over the nearly total loss of the $1.3 billion it invested in nine equity trades and one currency transaction, people involved in the matter said. A confrontation in Tripoli between a top fund executive and two Goldman officials left the bankers so rattled that Goldman arranged for a security guard to protect them before they left Libya the next day, people familiar with the matter claimed." (link)

God's work, baby.

(Love to see who wrote those options contracts....)

Banks float, galleons sink

2011-05-11T18:17:00.014+02:00

"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like."(Edward Thurlow)

So much for the $63.8m hitherto thought to have accrued over 7 years to Galleon's investment savvy.

Pending appeal, Raj Rajaratnam did not beat a single charge of the 14 against him for insider trading. His prosecutor, the race-card trumping US Attorney Preet Bharara (how many Punjabi-born federal prosecutors were there to choose from?) said this post-verdict:

“The message today is clear — there are rules and there are laws, and they apply to everyone, no matter who you are or how much money you have.”

Those would be rules and laws unevenly 'applied' by the US Department of Justice (DoJ).

Last August Barclays paid $298 million to settle accusations brought by the DoJ that it proactively helped Iran, Libya, Cuba, Sudan and everyone's favourite model citizen Myanmar transfer dollars hither and thither in contravention of United States sanctions. Erm, over a decade.

The DoJ examined the matter carefully and in due course concluded - like Barclays' senior managers who must have been shocked by the persistence of their underlings' law-breaking initiatives (when, of course, they found out) - that it was a perpetrator-less crime in terms of management responsibility.

But the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan, choked on that:

"“Why isn’t the government getting tough with banks?...The public looks at this and says, you know, they’re getting a free ride here...You expect the court to rubber stamp, but we can’t [yet he did, Ed]...You agree there must have been some human being who violated U.S. laws?...Can I just share a thought with you?...You know what? If other banks saw that the government was being rough and tough with banks and requiring banking officials to stand before federal judges and enter pleas of guilty, that might be a powerful deterrent to this type of conduct." (NYT article)

What, one might ask, were the uses the monies that Barclays (and earlier fine-payers Lloyds, Credit Suisse and perhaps others) so enthusiastically shuffled for its sanction-busting clients put to?

Oilileaks

2011-04-01T16:20:00.004+02:00

HMT minutes you'll never see...

TO: CHANCELLOR
FROM: PRIVATE OFFICE
DATE: APRIL 1 2011

INDUSTRY RESPONSE TO BUDGET'S NORTH SEA OIL TAX PLAN

Background:

Yesterday's mugging by oil industry officials of the Secretary of State for Energy, the Secretary of State for Scotland, our own Economic Secretary and the Energy Minister has forced a potentially tricky meeting upon us. BBC press coverage here and more partisan Scottish coverage here.

Lines to take:

"Removing oil-rich North African dictators doesn't come cheap."

Go Mother Theresa by referring to 'thoughts' of recommending to the PM that he consider additional energy levies to finance other noble causes in, say, the Ivory Coast, or Haiti. If necessary echo UN Resolution 1973: "Expressing grave concern at the deteriorating situation, the escalation of violence, and the heavy civilian casualties".

Cite absolute necessity (to all) of avoiding accusations of double standards at a sensitive time.

A full Department of Energy and Climate Change briefing, including industry offical profiles, is expected shortly.

[...continues...]

Crisis toolkits: just follow the instructions

2011-03-15T20:16:00.007+01:00

The blogs I want to write relate to cynical UK (and French) foreign policy towards Libya; and the odds of 40-year old nuclear reactors a scant few months from decommissioning melting down. But these are topics likely to employ either intemperate language; or demand more time than is available.

So a quickie relating to this IMF release of today dealing with real estate booms:

...what matters may be not the boom in itself, but how it is funded. Policy should focus on booms that are financed through credit and when leveraged institutions are directly involved, as the following busts tend to be more costly...

and the toolkit proposed:

So simple. And yet the politics engendered by crisis regularly manage to make key participants take their eyes off the flow chart.

Never mind the gap, feel the growth

2011-02-08T09:04:00.006+01:00

From Towers Watson yesterday, a survey of the 13 largest national pensions markets highlighting some quite remarkable growth in assets over the last year. All, however, placed in context with the following:

Defined Benefit asset/liability indicator, global basis (1998=100)

That is, with asset growth in 2010 hitting double digits the pension gap still only narrowed by 2%.

Full study here.

$573,000? Sure, Mr Chairman, I'll hire...

2011-01-31T20:22:00.008+01:00

Just out, another Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Economic Letter featuring another model.

Here is the effect on employment, it suggests, of the $1.72 trillion the US Central Bank has spent buying up various assets since 2008:

That is, the buying spree will have lowered unemployment by a point and a half by (important bit this) 2012. Or, in other words, the Fed will have created 3 million jobs. Nice.

Course, that does pan out to $573,000 (keep the change) per job. But this was not just about jobs was it? D-E-F-L-A-T-I-O-N!

No fear - once establishing that that particular threat is fully under control the authors produce this beautiful section of economic prose-hedging:

"The simulations also suggest that the longer-run inflationary consequences of the program are likely to be minimal, as portfolio-balance effects rapidly fall to zero and conventional monetary policy adjusts to bring conditions back to baseline. In part, this long-run neutrality reflects that agents in the model have confidence in the FOMC’s determination and ability to maintain price stability—a belief that policymakers ratify."

Que? Whatever - it's all good - bring on QE3, baby.

Due to data unavailabilty you'll just have to take my word for it

2011-01-21T21:58:00.005+01:00

In the land where I was born...

...one of my local rags pays the price for sacking the sub editing team (guess). Or not training them enough (certainty).

But in terms of fantasy political-economics the resulting style has much to recommend it.

Have a fine weekend.

Monsieur, with these Wikileaks, you're really spoiling us

2011-01-07T16:34:00.011+01:00

Norway's Aftenposten joined the Wikileaks ball recently from which this quote about state-sponsored industrial espionage à la française comes:

"France is the evil empire when it comes to stealing technology - and Germany knows it," said the director of Americans, while he added that German authorities have shown little willingness to do something about it." (link, Google translated)

Try telling that to the French:

"The French government today said it was the victim of an "economic war" after Renault, the partially state-owned car maker, suspended three top executives over suspected leaks of secret electric car technology." (link to yesterday's Guardian article)

Brilliant counter-PR? Or just a fact of international relations life? Looks like both.

There is a long pedigree for such activities and, in France, the most memorable episode concerned Russian theft of Concorde technology in the early 1960s. Not that the Tupolev TU-144 went on to become a household name or roaring success (Wikipedia entry here, with a nice section on the espionage).

But it is just the type of background in which to perfect what Molière called "the knack of easing scruples". Along with everyone else.

By the way, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the French intelligence organisation that Aftenposten refer to, have been on a recruitment drive - which continues. A growth industry, no less.

Happy New Year to you.

(And, by popular demand, the ad that inspired US Ambassadors everywhere to spoil their audiences)

Official: US housing excess inventory conundrum solved

2010-12-16T23:43:00.005+01:00

Just out from the Dallas Fed. Fortunately the hurricane season is over - for economics does not come much drier or more detached than this:

"Our results show that the typical hurricane strike raises real house prices for a number of years, with a maximum effect of between 3 to 4 % three years after occurrence. There is also a small negative effect on real incomes. These results are stable across models and sub-samples."

Course, your house has to survive the general inventory ~~destruction~~ reduction (and certain other "negative" effects) for this to happen.

Here come the Sans-culottes

2010-12-15T21:43:00.007+01:00

So my boy asks me to quiz him for a history test. French Revolution.

Ah, triggered by a sovereign debt crisis. The Church, largest land holder and a major political force alongside the soon to be headless King, gets its property expropriated to cover new bonds - “stolen” according to my son (at that point ignorant the Church was exempt from tax and allowed to extract 10% per annum on revenue from the faithful - God's work, don't you know).

Shame, with such a financially promising start based on pain-sharing, things then got out a bit out of hand. Some Cliff Notes:

some national debt paid down but enthusiastic overissuing uncovers the bonds’ collateral
hyperinflation-> shortages (austerity budgets?)-> price controls-> famines & riots
suspension of the Declaration of the Rights of Man-> dissent = crime -> much happy slapping via guillotine-> war as a revenue raising measure-> rise of the army
dictatorship-> ill-conceived adventure in Russia etc etc.

Course, the Church eventually was legally written out of state matters entirely in 1905. Not that verses of the history aren't reprised down the ages. In all sorts of contexts.

The woman says it's mine

2010-12-10T17:44:00.008+01:00

Despite some tearful admissions of paternity from private sector banks (with incitation from Uncle Central) there has not been much in the way of maintenance (outside Iceland) for the strange fruit of their loins.

Indeed, the very idea of financial participation in junior's recovery ("20 cents on the what?!") is invoked as a roadmap to general economic disaster. Not that this is a guarantee of inertia by Chancellor Merkel; or will prevent a deferred "restructuring" in some of today's "austerity budget" economies.

It is interesting (and no more without deeper reading) to contrast this confrontational approach with that of the Islamic banks - as reported in the latest edition of the IMF's Finance & Development.

A little maysir and (more, if this is corporate sponsorship-type spending) zakat would not have gone amiss; and would not going forward either. Unfortunately that reform game seems over (for now, perhaps).

Two extracts below with pdf links here and here:

Euro champions: our beautiful oligopolies

2010-12-06T17:23:00.009+01:00

The nature of gasoline pricing can be a painful obsession; not to mention a hands-on experience of the rockets-and-feathers phenomenon: stations manage to coordinate increases instantaneously, rejoicing in a chorus of margin explosion. Yet let OPEC jack up production and decreases float down very gently.

Yet more infuriating is the oligopolistic nature of pricing. Competitive pricing is rarer than genuine application of the Volker Rule; and the words "price war" simply do not apply.

So it was pleasant to see the German Cartel Office earlier today announce that they had had enough (despite their original OMV / Total ruling being overturned). Strike a blow for consumer motorists!

It is, it appears, a theme - though how strong a theme remains to be seen. For example, the Cartel Office stopped Shell buying as many stations from retailer Edeka as they wanted earlier this month. That is, Shell got 41 instead of 44 stations.

Looks symbolic but the regulators are also set to finish a two year "probe" into the gasoline market. Perhaps this may end up taking heart from research in the Dutch market (where regulators appear more aggressive). A paper from summer 2009 by Lach and Moraga-González, said:

"We found that as competition the number of gas stations increases the distribution of prices spreads out, with the low prices going down and the high prices going up. Consequently, competition has an asymmetric effect on prices.

This result has important welfare implications because when some prices increase and others decline, the price actually paid by consumers will depend on their shopping behaviour. All (hypothetical) consumers in our data, irrespective of whether they are informed about one or more prices, benefit from an increase in the number of stations.

The magnitude of the welfare gain, however, is greater for those consumers that observe more prices. As a result, an increase in competition has a positive but unequal effect on the welfare of consumers."

If the researchers ever turn their sights on other oligolpolies - the cosy division of the French mobile telecoms market into three very unequal shares comes to mind - odds are they would find exactly the same traits (and much the same solutions).

There is useful competition-creating regulation to be enacted on consumers' behalf in the European Union. And has been for some time.

If you thought Wikileaks was a serious diplomatic hoo-haa...

2010-12-03T10:23:00.005+01:00

...now comes news of the recall of the French Consul to Hong Kong for, allegedly, stealing expensive burgundy from a restaurant:

"Marc Fonbaustier is accused of hiding two bottles, worth over £4,000, in his suit before exiting the Hong Kong Country Club’s restaurant, the Wine Cellar." (link)

Sensible observers will first wonder about the mark-up of the restaurant - at least provide us with the details of producer, vintage and cru. Then they might wonder if it's a conspiracy - did Beijing not like the chap? Was he onto counterfeit wine labelling? Was it a joke - who seriously attempts fine wine theft by putting a bottle in each of his pants pockets (Maestro, a visual, please)?

We may never know for the Chinese government has demanded his removal; and Monsieur Fonbaustier has reportedly "admitted the facts and paid reimbursement" without, as Le Monde drily notes, specifying exactly what those facts were.

Oh, for a little Wikifuite.

'Very little of any real import has changed; on balance, pay practices have worsened.'

2010-11-30T16:34:00.012+01:00

So say Paul Hodgson, Greg Ruel and Michelle Lamb authors of Wall Street Pay: Size, Structure and Significance for Shareowners (link) from the Council of Institutional Investors.

I'm surprised if you're surprised. Sample para:

"In the wake of the financial crisis, the structure of compensation on Wall Street has improved. Positive changes include:

- Substantially improved clawback provisions
- Longer deferral periods for pay, especially equity
- An increase in equity as a proportion of compensation
- A rebalancing of the fixed pay/variable pay mix to mitigate risk taking

Despite these beneficial changes, none of the banks in the study has addressed adequately the importance of tying compensation to long-term value growth. Some banks have increased fixed pay excessively. And the effectiveness of the banks’ stronger clawback provisions has not been tested."

The report has several ideas for improving matters. Unfortunately, none of these include the notion of tying compensation to creditors' long-term interests as well as those of owners of equity. Perhaps they thought the one follows the other.

But, as the report itself notes, better long-term incentives existed pre-crisis in many non-US banks. Yet they too - last time I checked - did not escape pain.

Sadly, a long, strong course of bonusoxifren that might nurture the principle of selling less to and investing more for clients looks a medicine (yet?) too bitter to stomach.

Cropped image is by RJ Matson and can be viewed in full (and purchased on the St Louis Today website

The Chinese X-Factor

2010-11-18T16:11:00.005+01:00

Sofa inertia recently caught me in front of X-Factor. I have to say if you can't cover Bananarama you should probably go back to the day job.

Came similar thoughts when confronted by this google ad for an "iPad Clone" whilst researching smart phones:

I'm sure Deng Xio Sam cuts a great deal; and it is innovation of a sort most people expect from China (if that is where Sam gets his stock). Thus which idle layman would have expected the results of this piece of research out today from the Dallas Fed:

"...To date, the U.S., Japan and Germany have been the global locomotives of ideas. The landscape is changing, however, with patent filings growing rapidly in the BRIC economies (Chart 1). China’s growth has far outperformed other countries, with a fifteenfold increase in patent filings since 1995. Brazil and India have also performed well, with an estimated four- and sixfold increase in patent filings since 1995."

Full report here. Shame the piece does not cut the patents by type/area.

It's still different this time: stable vs botox prosperity

2010-11-07T11:27:00.004+01:00

A link currently doing the rounds of finance blogs points to a WSJ article reminding us, via Melchior Palyi, that history repeats but with twists.

Here's another for Mr Palyi ran a nice line, inadvertently perhaps, in this field:

(1938 Journal of Farm Economics, Vol 20, No 1)

Course, so much as changed since then.

Google: Dutch Sandwich or Dutch Oven?

2010-10-21T20:46:00.004+02:00

Nice job, boys.

JR vs Citi: there was only ever going to be one winner

2010-10-08T10:40:00.003+02:00

To paraphrase JR, "Well, Citi, I find your $11.6 million worth of philantrophy awe inspiring" (Dallas quote-bank here).

This is one story crying out for the detail behind what the arbitrators called "serious misconduct".