Swimming Lessons!

Apart from being the Subtitle of my favorite Shark Blog, "Swimming with Sharks" is also the title of this refreshingly unbiased article in the UK Telegraph.

What I found particularly rewarding was the fact that the majority of the Comments were well-informed and most importantly, very much pro-Shark. They even managed to largely ignore the token parasitic wanker and his usual garbage!
Just Great and maybe an indication that perceptions are starting to change!

And then, there's "How to swim with Sharks -- Voltaire Cousteau (Paris 1812)"
Highly informative! Or did you know that one of the principal rules is

DO NOT BLEED.
It is a cardinal principle that if you are injured either by accident or by intent you must not bleed. Experience shows that bleeding prompts an even more aggressive attack and will often provoke the participation of Sharks which are uninvolved or, as noted above, are usually docile. Admittedly, it is difficult not to bleed when injured. Indeed, at first this may seem impossible. Diligent practice, however, will permit the experienced swimmer to sustain a serious laceration without bleeding and without even exhibiting any loss of composure. The hemostatic reflex can in part be conditioned, but there may be constitutional aspects as well. Those who cannot learn to control their bleeding should not attempt to swim with Sharks, for the peril is too great.

There you have it!
May this be at the origin of the (self-debunked - and I'll leave it at that) myth of controlling one's heartbeat?

I've found this somewhere here and having surfed around quite a bit, I still completely ignore what this is all about!
In the process, I've managed to discover the name of the author, miserably failed an intelligence test, polished up my knowledge of American history (it's not Genocide if there are no survivors), finally managed to understand the AIG debacle (Your two cows are now worth $2 each to guys who want to make dog food) and the Stimulus Package,(Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China ? A. How's the weather up your way?), learned to argue effectively (Compare your opponent to Adolf Hitler), solved the chicken-or-egg riddle (there is not now, never has been, and never will be such a thing as a chicken or a chicken egg), learned to cook (When the chicken's ass blows the oven door open and the chicken flies across the room, it is done) and got reborn as the Village Ox.

Want to learn some more?
Start anywhere! And: Enjoy!

Where is the Money?

Nothing to do with Sharks.

But as an ex Investment Banker, I was impressed with Eliot Spitzer's analysis of the Wall Street debacle on today's Fareed Zakaria GPS. Lemme tell you, this is Exactly what happened and you would be well served in hearing, or reading it yourself!
Especially this:

SPITZER: ....When AIG initially received $80 billion, a decision that was a consequence of a very brief meeting of the New York Fed, the president of the New York Fed, the secretary of the treasury, perhaps Chairman Bernanke, and arguably, some reports say, the chairman of Goldman Sachs, $80 billion, virtually all of it flowed out to counterparties, $12.9 billion to Goldman Sachs.

Why did that happen? What questions were asked? Why did we need to pay 100 cents on the dollar on those transactions if we had to pay anything?

What would have happened to the financial system had it not been paid?

These are the questions that should be pursued. Bonus is a real issue, it touches us viscerally, the real money, and the real structural issue is the dynamic between AIG and the counterparties.

ZAKARIA: Because those payments are in the tens of billions of dollars, the bonuses are a few hundred million.

SPITZER: The bonuses, we think, are $164 million, give or take, huge money, I mean, nobody should diminish that, but these counterparty payments, tens and tens of billions of dollars.

ZAKARIA: And it -- to your mind it seems as though that this taxpayer may have been recklessly and unwisely paid out?

SPITZER: Maybe the case could be made that it should have been paid. But at a moment in our nation's history, when everybody is being asked to bear a piece of the burden, everybody, people are being told, work four days a week, not five, sales taxes are going to go up, contracts are being broken and renegotiated for workers across America, our 401(k)s and our savings have been depleted by the recklessness of Wall Street.

For Goldman and the other counterparties not to be able to say, we can make do with only 50 cents on the dollar, 30 cents on the dollar, after we've already given Goldman a $25 billion cash infusion, they are sitting on vast amounts of cash on the sidelines -- which is their right, but they're going to invest it in due course based upon their judgment.

For them, on top of all of that, to get another $12.9 billion in the dark without questions after a meeting of this sort is fundamentally wrong. And that is the nature of the inquiry that should be raised.

More videos of the interview here - required watching!

To Zakaria, kudos for a brilliant and intelligent piece of journalism - to Spitzer, compliments for being truthful, unflinching and yet nuanced.

OK, back to the Sharks.