capitalism *is* fun :-)

Just about when the Hungarian parliament was discussing to ban smoking in public places starting from 2009, they had to suspend the talks since some financial crisis hit their country and it needed everyone’s attention.
While financial markets are going down the drain, smokers in Hungary can sit relaxed and continue smoking in public places, as long as the crisis lasts.

Well … this could even help create some new jobs in the tobacco industry and boost their economy a bit.
We should now take long positions on Hungarian tobacco stocks.

This is some good news to me personally. I travel a lot to and through Hungary and I smoke.

Good news came to us today, from the other side of the pond (the US). Some happy motorists reported seeing gas prices below $2. This is absolute motorist p*rn on a continental scale. Let’s hope that all those people who just bought a Prius hybrid or other flower power-ed vehicle won’t stop paying their leases, causing another debt crisis (the hybrid crisis).

Due to the current market conditions and to allow for an unlimited amount of money printing for the Wall-Street bailout (without causing any inflation), the FED will be introducing the zero dollar bill, starting in early 2009.
Every man, woman or stockbroker can request and unlimited amount of bills to be printed for his/her use.
It will feature president George W. Bush, so that people will remember how the best US dollar bill in history was born.

Do enjoy

You have a higher chance of dying of brain cancer, than owning an American Express Centurion card.
This is based on real statistics data.

Given the fact that there is no Copy&Paste feature on the iPhone, people will no longer be able to share their p*rn.

and why is that mate?

A friend of mine raised two questions today:
- what would happen if complete car insurance would be banned?
- what to do with coins left from change ?

It’s an interesting thing, to combine these 2 issues, under the current market situation and the outcome could be interesting.
If complete car insurance would be banned, meaning you would have to take full responsibility for every accident and pay for the damages, all the insurance agents would lose their jobs. Since they have great commercial skills and a talent to sell useless services, they could get along just fine by doing various services which would be paid with coins. Take shoe shining for example. It used to be an interesting occupation.
They could team up with ex hedge fund managers which lost their jobs due to their funds being blown up.
Such a fund manager could help you hedge against bad weather damaging your clean shoes and offer you some fine cleaning services at hand.
They even used to have some advertisements about helping you get through “bad weather”. There is no need for a large advertising budget.

Voila … the economy can be saved and all those lost jobs could help my friend get rid of his coins and wear clean shoes. Just imagine if we put all those “agents” from AIG to work … the entire world could be walking around with shiny clean shoes

Washington Mutual share price, versus Failures-To-Deliver on short sales. Go figure

Just ran across the list of the world’s riskiest markets to invest in. Here we go:
1. Pakistan
2. Serbia
3. Argentina
4. Turkey
5. Philippines
6. Vietnam

I specially love the stock market in Pakistan. They have the best clearing and settlement service in the world. Just outside the main building, using modern financial instruments such as : bats, Molotov cocktails and other. I would definitely buy some health care stocks there. Wait. There is no such thing as health care there.