Staring into the abyss (continued)...

Back to gloom and doom, I'm afraid...

The lower house of the US congress has rejected the $700bn deal to bail out Wall Street. The rescue plan - the result of tense negotiations between the government and lawmakers - was voted down by 228 votes to 205 votes.

US President George Bush was said to be “very disappointed” by the result. Shares on Wall Street began to plunge as soon the announcement that the bill failed was made. The Dow Jones index lost 770 points - 6.9% - its biggest one-day point drop yet.

The shock effect of the failure to pass a financial bail-out plan in the US Congress has also left Asian stock markets reeling.

Meanwhile:

Fortis, Belgium's biggest financial-services firm and one of Europe's top 20 banks was partly nationalised by the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Ministers from the three countries agreed to put 11.2bn euros ($16.1bn; £8.9bn) into Fortis to save the bank. Apparently the Dutch-Belgian financial group's biggest mistake was joining in the 70bn euro purchase of the Dutch bank ABN Amro last year (along with Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland and Spain's Santander). Fortis was seen as too big a European bank to be allowed to go under. Its assets are greater than the size of Belgium's annual domestic economic output.

Shares in German lender Hypo Real Estate plunged after it struck a loan deal with a consortium of German banks. The bank had been in emergency talks with the various German banks regarding short-term and mid-term credit arrangements.

The Icelandic government has taken control of the country's third-largest bank, Glitnir, after the company faced short-term funding problems. The government has bought a 75% stake in the bank for 600m euros ($860m; £478m) to ensure stability of the bank during the current financial turmoil.

The British government has confirmed that mortgage lender Bradford and Bingley is to be nationalised? Under the arrangement, the government will take control of Bradford and Bingley's £50bn in mortgages and loans. B&B's £20bn savings business and branch network will be bought by rival Abbey, which is in turn owned by Spanish banking group Santander, who already owns Abbey, and recently bought Alliance & Leicester.

Wachovia, the fourth-largest US bank, is being bought by larger rival Citigroup in a rescue deal backed by US authorities. Under the deal, Citigroup will absorb up to $42bn (£23bn) of Wachovia losses. Wachovia has been hit by problems in the US housing market.

Time out (continued)...

Still feeling in a cool mood (hence the obligatory "cool" pic) - so here's some tunes that takes me back to my jazz-funky youth...

Loose Ends - Hangin' On A String (Contemplating)
Freeez - Keep In Touch
David Bendeth - Feel The Real
George Duke - Brazilian Love Affair
Unlimited Touch - I Hear Music In The Streets

Time out...

Nothing but doom and gloom at the moment - even Arsenal lost yesterday (at home to Hull...now I'm really gutted).

Methinks it's time to get away from it all - preferably several thousand miles west to the island of Barbados. Nothing to do and all day to do it....lie on a sun-kissed beach with a pretty lady beside me and recharge life's batteries with some Bajan fish cakes and Banks beer....or stopping by the Oistins Fish Fry...

PS: the lady pictured above is Czech glamour model Jana Defi (aka Maria Swan)...

Staring into the abyss (continued)...

"The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history".
Friedrich Hegel (German Philosopher. 1770-1831)

Currently on the Business Channel, is "Tulipmania" - a film examining the frenzy generated by the opening of a market in tulip futures on the Amsterdam stock exchange in the 17th Century. Tulip mania is considered to be the first recorded speculative bubble, and one of history's great financial disasters.
As Dubya fights to pass the $700bn (£380bn) rescue package to buy mortgage-backed assets from US banks and troubled bank Bradford & Bingley is reportedly nationalised by the British government, we don't appear to have learned from our medieval ancestors...
Tulip mania (Wikipedia entry)
Treasury to nationalise B&B bank

Paul Newman, RIP

Like everyone else I was saddened to hear that Hollywood legend Paul Newman, star of popular films including Cool Hand Luke, The Sting and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, died of cancer at the age of 83.
He was nominated for an Oscar 10 times, winning a best actor trophy in 1987 for The Color Of Money. In May 2007, the actor said he was giving up acting because he could no longer perform to the best of his ability.

In an era of CGI, shallow one-movie wonders and wannabe celebs, Paul Newman was a great actor whose skills will be sadly missed. He was also a great humanitarian - his efforts included establishing summer camps for children who suffered from life-threatening illnesses and donating profits from his "Newman's Own" food range to a number of charitable organisations.

Your coolness will be missed, Mr. Newman....RIP
Movie legend Paul Newman dies, 83

Football, football, football (continued)...

Meanwhile, back at Sid James Park...Newcastle have named former Wimbledon, Luton and Nottingham Forest manager Joe Kinnear as their interim boss until the end of October. The Magpies have been without a manager since Kevin Keegan quit on 4 September.
In the meantime, the consortium of Nigerian businessmen says it has raised £350m to buy the club from current owner Mike Ashley, but they may need another £100m to secure the deal.
One may recall Ashley recently announcing he had put the football club up for sale, following major protests from Newcastle United fans (aggrieved by Keegan's departure) who called for Ashley to leave and the club's board to be sacked.
Magpies name Kinnear interim boss

Another crazy day in the mixed up world of Newcastle United FC, I guess...but I got to admit I'm quite surprised about Joe Kinnear's appointment. He hasn't worked in football management for four years.
But then it appears Newcastle United has become a football manager's poison chalice, even on a temporary basis...

Staring into the abyss (continued)...

OK - back to the serious stuff....

Britain's eight largest mortgage lender and one of the country's biggest buy-to-let specialists, Bradford & Bingley, has become the latest institution to be hit by the escalating crisis in the financial markets and the deteriorating state of the UK housing market.
City analysts said the bank was unlikely to survive in its current form and one called on it to be nationalised as Northern Rock was last year. Bradford & Bingley had already planned to cut 370 jobs because of the continuing downturn in the market for mortgages.
Financial crisis: Bradford & Bingley to become latest victim

Meanwhile HSBC has said it needs to cut 550 jobs in London as the global financial crisis deepens. The banking giant is to axe 1,100 jobs worldwide, blaming the current financial turmoil for the decision.
Bank giant HSBC axes 1,100 jobs

And across the pond, Washington Mutual has become the the largest bank failure in US history, as regulators were forced to take control and sell off the mortgage lender. The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) sold its assets to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9bn (£1bn) after $16.7bn of deposits had been withdrawn in 10 days.
Regulator sells Washington Mutual

Finally, as Congress continues to debate in a bid to reach agreement on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700 billion (£380bn) rescue package for the US financial industry, Marc Faber, managing director of Marc Faber Ltd. in Hong Kong, has stated the U.S. government's bailout may require as much as $5 trillion, seven times the amount requested.
Marc Faber Says $5 Trillion Needed for U.S. Financial Bailout

More and more these days, I think of "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

The return of Claudia Casali?

Another glamour model rumored to be making a comeback is Claudia Casali.
According to her Yahoo group, Claudia is supposedly working on a website, so if I hear anything else, I'll update this blog...

The return of LDM (continued)...

Some months ago I commented that adult glamour model Linsey Dawn McKenzie appeared to be making a comeback...well it appears that comeback is gathering apace.
Preview videos of Linsey's photo shoots and new messages from her can be seen on her MySpace page and a new website called "linseydawnoffical" is up (although it's in the development phase)....
Linsey Dawn McKenzie's MySpace
Linsey Dawn McKenzie's official website

Staring into the abyss (continued)...

US President George W Bush is about to address the nation shortly over the $700bn (£378bn) bail-out of Wall Street, in the face of growing resistance and criticism to the plan from Congress and the American public (who face coughing up over $2,000 each if the bailout is approved).
Congress cool after bail-out plea

Meanwhile the FBI has begun preliminary investigations into potential corporate fraud at mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the failed investment bank Lehman Brothers and troubled insurer American International Group (AIG).
Key finance firms 'probed by FBI'

And the effects of this financial crisis continue to spread like an epidemic. In Hong Kong, thousands of savers mobbed branches of Bank of East Asia on Wednesday to withdraw their deposits, as the bank scrambled to reassure them that rumours it was overexposed to Lehman Brothers and AIG was untrue. The speculation was believed to have been spread by mobile phone. The Bank stated that its total outstanding exposure to Lehman Brothers was HK$422.8m (£29m), and to AIG was HK$49.9m (£3.5m).
Withdrawals hit Bank of East Asia

Privatise the profits, socialise the losses. The American taxpayer might not fully understand mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps, but they do realise when they've been dumped with the bill for financial trading gone awry, and they have every right to be angry with those responsible (and those authorities who stood idly by). But when the alternative is possibly watching the global financial system go into meltdown, the choice is stark.

Angel (rant time)...

The cancelled TV series "Angel" is still continuing as the comic book mini-series "Angel: After the Fall" (which I'll need to catch up with soon). But I'm still sorry the TV series was killed off.
I should be happy that the Sci-Fi channel is repeating Angel.....but, why oh why, do they bother when they censor any episode showing dubious content.
For example, series 4 of Angel deals with the coming of Jasmine (played by Gina Torres). On the surface Jasmine is a beautiful woman who enslaves everyone who comes into contact with her, but in reality her features are awful and maggot-ridden.
Except the Sci-Fi channel deletes every scene which shows Jasmine's horrific features.
If the powers-that-be at the Sci-Fi channel are so worried about the content of "Angel" why not show it after the watershed?

Commercial break..

This advert was devised for Hovis to promote the return of their unsliced little brown loaf, which was first sold 122 years ago. The Hovis ad lasts 122 seconds long, and is one of the longest adverts ever shown.

Every second represents a journey through time, as a young boy (13 year-old Brian Mackie), purchases a Hovis loaf in 1886, then travels through the highs and lows of British history, before he brings home said loaf to his mum in 2008. During his trip the lad witnesses events such as the suffragette movement, the first and second world wars, England's 1966 world cup win, the miners' strikes of the 1980s and the Millennium celebration.

A previous Hovis advert, which used a brass version of Dvorak's New World Symphony and was directed by Ridley Scott, was voted the best advert of all time in 2006.

The new advert costs £15million (which is a lot of bread for a commercial about a loaf). Now if only Hovis could reduce the price of their loaf back to what it used to be in 1886....
New Hovis ad - Watch it here

Staring into the abyss

It has been a historic and turbulent week for share markets around the world as the credit crunch, which began last year, became a financial hurricane, sweeping all and sundry.

This Monday saw the collapse of Lehman Brothers, once the fourth biggest US investment bank and the first major bank to collapse since the start of the credit crisis. After a seven-hour hearing yesterday that ended past midnight, an US bankruptcy judge backed UK bank Barclays' plan to buy the core business of the company for $1.3bn (£700m).

Lehman's demise was then followed by the once-mighty US bank Merrill Lynch agreeing to be taken over by Bank of America for $50bn, to prevent it becoming extinct. Meanwhile a takeover of the UK's biggest mortgage lender HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland) by Lloyds TSB was approved by the government to forestall a run on it by customers and in the US, the Federal Reserve supplied an $85bn (£48bn) rescue package for AIG, the country's biggest insurance company, to save it from bankruptcy.

And now American officials say they will hammer out a "comprehensive" plan to help ease what has become a global financial maelstrom. The US Treasury is proposing a fund worth up to $800bn (£440bn) to buy back a large proportion of the bad debt in the US mortgage market.

When you add the nationalisation of Northern Rock in Britain, followed by the acquisition of Wall Street's fifth-largest bank, Bear Stearns, by larger rival JP Morgan Chase in a $240m deal backed by $30bn of central bank loans (a year earlier, Bear Stearns had been worth £18bn), and the rescue of mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which account for nearly half of the outstanding mortgages in the US) by the American government, this is the worst financial markets crisis for decades.

So where do we go from here? Just because Dubya and the US Treasury are acting like the Cavalry riding to the rescue, it doesn't mean this is over. The ripples from this week's events are already spreading outwards - redundancies will be a certain by-product of the HBOS-Lloyds TSB merger. Before filing for bankruptcy, Lehman Bros employed about 25,000 staff worldwide, including 5,000 in the UK. Leading economists have warned British taxpayers face up to 5p in the pound in extra taxes because of the credit crunch.


Whatever is decided, to do nothing is considered far more costly than the $800bn bill estimated for the bailout (actually, make that more likely $1 trillion). And some serious questions will need to be asked by taxpayers on both sides of the Atlantic...
Timeline: Global credit crunch

Death to satellite TV?

From the BBC....

Saudi Arabia's most senior judge has stated it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV channels that show 'immoral' programmes.

Sheikh Salih Ibn al-Luhaydan said some "evil" entertainment programmes aired by the channels promoted debauchery.

The judge made the comments on a state radio programme, in response to a listener who asked his opinion on the airing of programmes featuring scantily-dressed women during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"There is no doubt that these programmes are a great evil, and the owners of these channels are as guilty as those who watch them," said the sheikh. "It is legitimate to kill those who call for corruption if their evil can not be stopped by other penalties."
Saudi judge condemns 'immoral TV'

If I was Rupert Murdoch, I wouldn't make any plans to vist Saudi Arabia for the immediate future...
Still here's a thought - instead of watching these "scantily-dressed women" why not just switch channels?

Football, football, football (continued)...

You couldn't make it up....

Newcastle owner Mike Ashley has reportedly met Kevin Keegan for talks in London tonight. The subject of the talks was unknown, however this development has made Keegan the bookies' favourite to return to the manager's job at St James' Park (which he vacated last week), and some bookmakers have even suspended betting for the next Newcastle manager.

Talk about Loony Toons....

Tommy...

A hotel has apologised after a soldier was refused a room under its "no military personnel" policy, while he was on leave visiting an injured colleague.
Corporal Tomos Stringer, 23, from Gwynedd, was visiting a wounded friend in Woking, Surrey when he was turned away from the Metro hotel, after showing his military ID card. He spent the night in his car.
Cpl Stringer, who himself has a broken wrist, was on leave from Afghanistan.
The hotel had experienced problems with soldiers staying there and staff had been asked to be "cautious". But it admitted a "mistake" in this case.
Hotel apology for soldier refusal

The hotel should re-examine its exclusion policy towards the armed forces. It is unfair to tarnish all soldiers as thugs.
Yes, every part of our society has an unruly element. But these soldiers are prepared to put their lives on the line in order to defend this country and the people who live here, which includes the management of the hotel.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot...

TOMMY
by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Football, football, football (continued)...

Sorry - still talking about English Premiership football....but it's been a really bizarre (and somewhat worrying) week....

With Newcastle's manager Kevin Keegan and West Ham's boss Alan Curbishley walking out of their respective clubs for near identical reasons, and the gargantuan financial power recently acquired at Manchester City, there's a feeling that the sport is spiralling towards madness.

One has to feel sorry for Curbishley and Keegan, since neither of them did anything wrong.
Curbs went to West Ham while they were in the relegation mire and managed to keep them in the Premiership. Keegan joined Newcastle, who were also staring relegation in the face, and was able to lead them to mid-table safety. And their reward? Knifed in their backs, as their clubs made player transfers without their knowledge.

Considering the circumstances behind their resignations, who'd want to take over as manger at Newcastle United or West Ham? You couldn't imagine Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsène Wenger in a similar position at their clubs, but those managers increasingly seem like a species on the verge of extinction.
The Newcastle fans protesting at Keegan's departure may not like it, but in Premiership football these days, managerial influence has limits. Just ask José Mário dos Santos Félix Mourinho or Avram Grant...
Curbishley quits as West Ham boss
Keegan resigns as Newcastle boss

Football, football, football (continued)...

Sorry to drone on about footy, but unless one has zero interest in the sport, you might have noticed Real Madrid's Brazil star Robinho joining Manchester City for a British transfer record-breaking £32.5 million yesterday.
To me the recent developments at Manchester City is a serious declaration of intent from them that the so-called "big four" Premiership teams (Arsenal, Chelski, Man Utd and Liverpool) has just become the big five. Unfortunately five into four doesn't go and pretty soon, one of these clubs will be dropping into the ranks of the also-rans.
What's also scary is the claim from Manchester City's new billionaire Arab owners (Abu Dhabi United Group) that they are prepared to pay 135 million pounds (210 million dollars) to land Cristiano Ronaldo once the transfer market re-opens next year, and they are also willing to acquire Arsenal's Cesc Fábregas and Fernando Torres of Liverpool.
So Fergie, Wenger and Benítez beware January 1st 2009...

I hope those City fans ecstatic with their new-found spending power remember Chelski's purchase of Andriy Shevchenko - an example that expensive players doesn't always mean they are successful players.

I also hope current City manager Mark Hughes recalls the fate of Claudio Ranieri - while he was in charge of Chelski, they finished runners-up in the Premiership and reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League. But this wasn't good for the new owner of the club, one Roman Abramovich...who replaced Claudio with a certain "Special One" (who suffered the same fate).

(and I haven't even mentioned the antics at Newcastle with Kevin Keegan yet...)
Man City beat Chelsea to Robinho