Short Selling Bans Imposed in UK and USA
Filed under: Business, Finance and Investment, International News, Uncategorized
In response to the recent unprecedented volatility in the financial markets, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) have both imposed temporary bans on the short selling of financial stocks.
For those not in the know, short selling is the act of selling stock one does not own, with the aim of buying it back at a lower price and profiting from the difference. This strategy is used to make money in a falling market, or when one expects a fall in the near future.
Large hedge funds have been blamed for abusing short selling to manipulate the market and contributing to the deterioration of world stock prices.
The US ban applies to 799 stocks, and will initially last for 10 days, but may be extended. The UK ban applies to 32 companies and will last until the beginning of January 2009.
In Australia, our own so-called regulator ASIC has stated that we already have restrictions on short selling. Many people would consider this laughable.
I have an article that’s been sitting on the back-burner concerning my opinion of the role of short selling in the world stockmarket turmoil. It will follow next.
Google News Aggregator Causes $1.14 billion loss
Filed under: Business, Finance and Investment, International News
A deeply concerning post, courtesy of slashdot.org.
Google News erroneously reprinted an old article from 2002 concerning United Airlines, which faced deep financial problems at the time. This caused a run on its NASDAQ-listed stock UAL, leading to its share price falling from $12 to $3, after which the stock was suspended from trading. This caused a drop in its market capitalisation of $1.14 billion. The stock has since recovered to over $10, but its market capitalisation is still down over $300 million from before the old article was published.
Google News regularly searches and indexes online news sites around the world. In turn, many other online news sites grab headline from Google News. The automated nature of this process provides many opportunities for false information to be widely disseminated.
With the growth of Social Bookmarking sites and News Aggregators, people wishing to manipulate the market, or spread any kind of propaganda now have a very powerful tool at their disposal.
2008 is the Coldest Year of the 21st Century
I am sure that this does not come as a surprise to anyone living through the current Australian Winter, but this year, 2008, has been the coldest this century. So reads a fantastic post at slashdot.
But does this reality make the anthropogenic global climate change believers start having some doubts?
Of course not! It appears that they now say that a combination of phenomena – the La Niña effect and “Atlantic Multidecadal Information” will buy us another decade or so of unusually cold temperatures – plenty of time to concoct a new explanation to resolve their past inconsistencies.
Arab Squatters Imprisoned After Defying Court Order to Vacate Property
Filed under: International News, Middle-East Affairs
The above could be the alternative headline for the emotionally-charged article written by Fairfax Middle-East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis – “Crunch time as family fights to keep home from Jewish settlers”
In summary, a Palestinian Arab man, Khalil Hanun, was imprisoned after refusing to vacate a property that a court ruled, was owned by somebody else. Oh, and the other party happened to be Jewish.
In any normal country, when a squatter or bad tenant refuses to leave following an eviction order, would this person not expect to be arrested, fined or imprisoned? And would this normally be considered newsworthy? No it wouldn’t, but standards are different when the action involves Israel.
The only valid, objective questions essential to resolving this matter are:
1. Did the group of Jewish people purchase the property from the Ottoman Turk authorities who were sovereign at the time? Yes or No?
2. Under what law or capacity did the UN Relief and Works Agency act when giving the Palestinian Arabs possession of the land, considering that it was occupied by Jordan at the time?
The answers to these two questions are sufficient to determine the outcome of this case, without introducing emotive racist or nationalist arguments.
But if Mr Koutsoukis were truly interested in balance, he may also have wished to mention the following:
- Jersualem was a united city until one half was captured by Jordan (formerly Transjordan) during the 1948 war, following their decision to take part in the Arab attack on the newly declared state of Israel. Jordan annexed the area in 1949, but this was not internationally recognised, except by Pakistan and Great Britain.
- The area, Sheikh Jarrah, was historically a Jewish neighbourhood until Arab rioters drove them out in the 1920’s. Jordan drove out the Jewish inhabitants from the remaining part of Jerusalem under their control during the 1948 war.
- Israel recaptured Jerusalem at the end of the 6-day war in 1967, many of the neighbourhoods that were rebuilt are in fact former Jewish areas.
I do not know all the facts, so I will keep an open mind. I wish Mr Koutsakis and his ilk would do the same.
Updated 8:09pm, 19-8-2008: Other sources on the net refer to them as the ‘Al-Kurd family’.
Bangladeshi Editor May Be Executed for Advocating Ties with Israel
Filed under: International News, Middle-East Affairs
The Jerusalem Post reports – a Bangladeshi newspaper editor, Salah Choudhury, is on trial for sedition charges, largely for advocating ties with Israel. If he is found guilty, he may face the death penalty.
In November 2003, he was arrested at the airport, as he was leaving Bangladesh on his way to a conference in Israel promoting co-existence between Muslims and Jews, and has been imprisoned ever since.
His has been accused of being “anti-Islamic” and “defaming Bangladesh”. Anti-Israel sentiment is strong in this impoverished country, despite the fact that Bangladesh has little to do with Israel, neither sharing any borders, nor being an Arab country.
I hope those civil rights advocates in the mainstream media who rush to defend the rights of captured Al-Qaida members and other fanatics, may spare just a few words for Mr Choudhury.
I Am Rich!
Filed under: Business, Finance and Investment, Humour, International News, Pop Culture
In these difficult economic times, people have to be creative to get ahead.
An enterprising fellow by the name of Armin Heinrich, capitalised on conspicious consumption centred around Apple’s much-hyped iPhone, released last month.
He created an iPhone application named “I Am Rich”, whose sole function is to display a computer-generated image of a glowing red ruby, as a status symbol in order to flaunt the wealth of the owner.
Apparently, 8 people purchased this application, for the listed price of $999.99, before it was removed by Apple, following a complaint from a purchaser who claimed he accidentally clicked on the buy button.
The LA Times has a fantastic article, with pictures of the Apple store advertisement and an application screenshot.
