OFF AND RUNNING

Whew, where to begin? I can't belive so much has happened since we left town. Florida was beautiful by the way, as it always is between Oct 15 and April 15. The other six months it's uninhabitable. Watching the grandkids at Disney World is worth the $11,000,000 it takes to get into the damn place. What a concept.

Anyway, The Leader and his party have the knickers in a twist at the goings-on in the various states and the heat their boys in the union movement are taking. Funny, I don't hear any of that, "I won, deal with it" or "elections have consequences" talk coming out of his mouth lately. In fact not much is coming out that makes any sense at all, especially in the matter of the budget or the nation's finances as we careen towards a shut down of the government. It's not going to happen but in a rather perverse way I sort of wish I could witness a missed payment on the national debt. What a kick; it would make Ali Baba square--or whatever its name is--in Cairo look like a gathering of grandma's knitting circle. One can dream, can't one?

One thing that is important that did occur was the "merger" of the New York Stock Exchange with the Deutsche Bourse. Important in the sense of what this tells us rather than the actually effect it will have in the real world of stock trading. There's very little doubt in my mind that the loss of a substantial amount of the new capital raising business that made New York the center of the financial universe to places like Frankfurt, London and Hong Kong was the result not only of the vast world-wide creation of wealth around the globe in the past 20 years but also as a result of the overregulation--IMHO--of the U.S. markets. With laws such as SOX we are simply a pain in the butt to the rest of the world--and we live in a HIGHLY competitive world. The same thing is going to happen to our hold over the capital markets as a result of the moronic Dodd/Frank debacle (more on that tomorrow). But instead of seeing the light, the only thing that wizz-bang of finance, Chuckie Schumer can respond when asked if the deal will be approved is,"New York had better come first in the new name." Last time I heard that was when Morgan Guaranty bought Chase Manhattan (J.P. MorganChase) and the chairman of Chase said, "Well, at least we saved the name." Tom was a hell of a nice guy; too bad he was an idiot. We lost, guys...WE LOST! And we're about to lose again.

This weekend there was another momentous event: Ireland's ruling party of 70 years got murdered at the polls. Oh, everyone knew they were going to lose but they were slaughtered. Why momentous, you say? Well, for those who were paying attention one of the campaign promises made by the in- coming Fine Gael was to lay on a little "burden sharing" in regard to the treatment of the Irish banking system. Regular readers will know that the previous government was extremely generous towards creditors, basically guaranteeing all of the banks' obligations; not this new bunch. They are looking for bondholders and other creditors to take a haircut and whooo-eee, The French and the Germans don't like that one bit because it's their banking systems we're talking about as well as the good burgers of Kensell Rise and High Street Ken. Needless to say, watching all of this unfolding will be the Greeks and the Spanish and the...well, you get the idea. The thought of this playing out over the next few months is simply delicious. I'll be watching along with my fellow dead-beats. Good to be back.