Henley

Henley this afternoon, principally for a late lunch, but also a quick meander around the town. Set on the River Thames and well known for the Royal Regatta in July, there were only a few rowing today in the rather crisply cold weather.

We dodged sleet and rain to visit our enjoyable venue and surfaced to witness the few minutes of near sunshine, before the wind and rain returned.

Gardening Notes

Regular readers of rashbre central may not have detected the extent of rashbre acres spread today in sunshine glory despite the weather forecasts. The garden is on a kind of self help programme, with an occasional visit from a man with a trailer who somehow keeps it neat with two or three large, noisy machines.

And the garden has its sense of drama. The blackbirds commandeer various bushes for nesting and it all goes along in nice equilibrium until at some point a neighbourly cat appears and starts (a) patrolling and then (b) hiding in the bushes to er - surprise the birds.

So today, that's the scenario being played out, with the very street wise parent blackbird dodging around and making special alarm call sounds to warn the fledgling pilot young ones of the need for care.

eggsperiment

Simulation to test the effect of traders injecting false rumours into the global economic structure using creme eggs and mousetraps. Press the start button to see the findings.

koffie time?

Woah! - I've angemeldet and entered my waachtwoord tonight and everything is different again!

Amazingly, the Dow has leapt from the doldrums to add 420 points in a single day. Some would call this magic, some would call this a miracle and some might even attempt to make profit from this remarkable turnaround.

Perhaps everything I said yesterday was wrong. Perhaps the economy hasn't really got a hole in it.

Or maybe the Fed bouyed confidence by dropping base rate by a whopping 0.75% in a day, so that its now at its lowest level in years and close to the point where it can't really go any further. Or maybe even the further $200bn just slipped into the American economy through support for the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac government back mortgages has some tiddle of an effect.

Perhaps Mr Bush reads rashbre central too, and felt compelled challenge my points in his speech just delivered to the Pentagon. He emphasized that the world is a better place as a result of the Iraq war. The half trillion spent has been worth it.

Perhaps my thinking needs adjustment. Perhaps I've been sitting in this koffie shop in Amsterdam too long and the smoke is beginning to get to me. I'll be seeing pink bicycles next.

no problem

It looks as if the black holes in the global economies are starting to form now. I wondered some months ago what would happen to all the missing money and where it would finally come to rest.

Bush, Brown and a few other politicians have attempted to influence outcomes by lobbing extra reserves into the system in an attempt to stave off the problems. For Bush it was relevant to the US election year and better for him to hold problems until the other side of his term. Brown had already been given a hospital pass when he took the premiership with the interesting twist that he'd somehow thrown the ball to himself.

So now we can hear the gentle popping of major corporations. The Northern Rock was the highest visibility UK one, with around £50billion of missing money so far and climbing. Bear Stearns was the fifth largest investment house in the USA until a few days ago and the value at buyout of some $236m compares with $18bn around a year ago - or some 0.14% of the prior value.

In a few days, around 3-4% has been wiped from stock exchanges around the world, notably except the Dow, where the amount of intervention has kept it around neutral. The Fed dropping $30bn into help JP Morgan Chase absorb Bear Stearns may have just tipped the Dow positive. Somehow things seem to be on a very delicate edge at the moment with what seem to be huge quantities of reserve funding being used to plug the various gaps.

All of that overlooks the money pit of the Iraq war. Some would (perhaps cynically) say that Bush's original involvement with Iraq was partly done for economic reasons. Beyond all of the Weapons of Mass Destruction and Resolution 1441 ambiguities that led to the war, there was also a view in some areas that the short term boost that followed the intense part of the war was a way to bolster the dot bombed US economy. Not to mention keeping a hold on middle eastern oil.

Experts such as the Centre for Economic and Policy Research tend to disagree that the 'stoke an economy through war' has anything beyond a short term effect and that by year six a war would have major negative economic consequences for the United States - we are currently at year five.

The spending on Iraq totals somewhere north of $400bn from the US so far and a current run rate of around $8bn per month, according to the CSIS Iraq Study Group.

Just starting to add together some of the numbers listed here illustrates the amount of money flow that drifts towards a hole of some sort. Whilst they were disaggregated it was difficult to see the scale of the challenges. Now there's the visible accumulation of loss and the knock on effect of this into the next layer of organizations.

As an example, another UK organisazation, HBOS, lost 12.5% after Bear Stearns, because of its rumoured links to US sub-prime. Other UK financials like Barclays dropped 9% and RBS by 8% and in the USA Merrill Lynch dropped 5%, Morgan Stanley 8% and CitiGroup 6%. More scarily, intra day, Lehman Brothers dropped 46% but corrected after the chief exec issued a statement.

The problem now seems to be that most of the conventional corrective tactics have been played. The last few Bank rate reductions haven't worked. Last week's $200bn injection by the Fed didn't work. The UK and US Government are now both bailing out a significant financial services institution. And still somewhere there's 'missing money' which has been driven by corporate commission-driven sales tactics and efforts to boost global economics on the back of warfare.

I'm sure the politicians will want to make the best they can of a lumpy carpet, but the dirt is really beginning to pile up. The only vacuum in town seems to be the one created by this ever expanding global deficit.

Amstel

My plane arrived slightly early tonight, so I was feeling smug as I negotiated the double revolving doors to the outside of the airport.

Then whoosh! A sudden barrage of tiny hailstones that lasted about ten minutes. I was waiting for Guus to show up in his big black Chrysler and had arranged to meet him by the vast television screen near the airport taxi rank.

There were about fifteen other people with similar plans huddled into the little glass shelter, and I was just getting ready to make a dash to the other distant empty shelter, when I spied the distinctive car and the reassuring flashing of headlights. An effortless drive into rainy Amsterdam and now I'm sitting with a local beer in a bar around the corner from this street.

Tomorrow and Thursday I will have my nose to the grindstone, so I guess I won't have much time for wandering although I expect a group of us will pitch up for a dinner tomorrow evening. Still. Amsterdam's distinct character with canals, narrow streets, merchant houses, bicycles, cafes and bars, sweet smelling cigarettes (!), liberalism, tourists and bustle permeates even a short visit.

once

Late finish from work but then another movie evening, this time with the musical called Once, which was filmed in Dublin for about €130k. There's a busker played by Glen Hansard and Czech Republic immigrant pianist played by Marketa Irglova. Simple plotline building towards making a music recording against a backdrop of his torn breakup and hers with a child and husband in home country. Not a musical in the Hollywood sense, but a good "Ahhh" ending.

Endearingly played and filmed with often handheld digital video. It mixes in natural lighting, grabbed street scenes and I believe a number of the actors who were relatives of people in the production. It seems to capture Dublin well and the love of the music shines through. I really enjoyed it and can see why it played well at the indie box-office. Interesting that quite a few movie watchers thought it was based on a real situation. Enthusiastic guerrilla film making done really well.

pillow

American Gangster

I cracked open the DVD of American Gangster, which I missed at the cinema. First dilemma was that there were two versions of the film, apparently with different endings. Conservatively, I decided to go for the original movie theatre version, which is also some 18 minutes shorter than the re-cut version.

It's Ridley Scott directing Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in a pseudo true story about the rise of black gangster Frank Lucas. As a Harlem based gangster, he buys heroin direct from Bangkok creating a New York street price that upsets the Mafia. The police are on the take except messily honourable New Jersey cop Crowe, whose job is to reel in these bad folk.

Washington plays Lucas as a princely, if cold blooded hoodlum; I suspect the real version was somewhat rougher around the edges. Strangely, the 'chasing Lucas plotline' only comes out quite late in the film, so the usual 'cat and mouse' aspects are missing.

There's some rise to fame scenes, Thailand jungle moments, bribed US military drug shipments, a lower order criminal who gives the game away and then an intercepted military transport plane which is dismantled a la French Connection. The drugs turn out to be in the base of the coffins being carried back from Vietnam and then there's a heavy duty raid on the drug manufacturing plant in the Projects of Harlem.

Its shot in a sort of seventies brown, no doubt for atmosphere, but if I'm honest I found it to be okay rather than great. I think there have been other films across this territory, both mafioso based and rootin-tootin cop thrillers. Consequently I found this well acted but sort of tame and formulaic. Probably a bit long, too. Even the section leading up to the discovery of the two tons of heroin packed into the presumably somewhat heavy coffins I found laboured.

I suppose a lot of this story has been done in other films so many of the scenes had a slight 'paint by numbers' feel. I know that Bourne, Godfathers, Goodfellas, LA Confidential and similar have genre components, but they all seemed to have some extra grip or zing that I found missing from this one.

I've still got the other version to watch, but I think it could be some time before I come back to this Hollywood Blockbuster. Meantime, I see ex members of NYC DEA have raised a class action lawsuit against Universal for the film's allegations of corruption in New York.

anything?

There's quite a difference in the coverage of some events between the USA and UK. The current big US scandal story gets around page seven coverage over here. Its about about New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and "Kristen"/Ashley Alexandra Dupre the expensive lady who takes the train from New York to Washington to consort consult with him in hotel rooms.

And rashbre central's hastily assembled webcam of Kristen is not part of a negotiation, in case anyone is mistaken. She seems friendly enough over at her myspace website and even has a pop song as Nina Venetta called "What we Want" to promote.

Like Kristen, family man Foxy Spitzer seemed to need a different name whilst in room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel, but allegedly used his 5th Avenue, NY address, which perhaps could help the billing for these diamond rated services. The redacted transcript of the wiretap (P27 onwards) explains this and shows that Client 9 had to have Kristen described.

Apparently, the payment is normally by wire at an hourly rate back to QAT Consulting of New Jersey which is outside of Eliot Spitzer's jurisdiction, unlike Staten Island where he closed down a similar operation. However, Client 9 had some credit and seemed to pay cash. Client 4 seemed to have asked whether QAT could be classed as a legitimate business and therefore properly expensed.

So I can't help wondering if the US taxpayer has been paying for any of the "comprehensive and hands on" services provided by QAT Consulting and who else in power is a member of the Emperor's Club VIP from whence these ladies are supplied?

Here in the UK its much simpler; we have a television family show to select the next stars to appear in the West End production of Charles Dicken's story of a child exploiter and his lady of the night accomplice, Nancy. In fairness, when the phone votes open we can select the ragamuffin street lady, but the principal exploited boy will be chosen by the judges. And this preview of the next production of Oliver Twist is something I don't mind paying my licence to enjoy.

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The Diamond Age

I can't say I've ever really enjoyed the Star Wars films although I like the ideas of future/science fiction and so forth. One of the good things about the very first film was that it portrayed space related artifacts as slightly beaten up. Much like cars in Winter, the elements had a chance to spatter grit around.

Its the same around at rashbre central, when a piece of theoretically gleaming technology has to be taken into the repair shop.

It has just happened to my little work PC, which suddenly had a collection of meltdowns. First the keyboard fatigue that somehow makes rashbre central a source of google hits for people emulating my technique to reapply loose keys. Then the buzzy fan which sounds like a hovercraft preparing for Channel crossing. Then the clicks from the special shock absorbing disk and finally the one that clinched it - the blank screen. Not Blue screen. No screen. Oh dear.

Resourcefully I just plugged in a spare monitor into the erstwhile laptop until I could find a time to drop it in for repair. It was a day I was travelling abroad and I could afford to operate from Blackberry. But then I got the phone call. It said - "when we switched your machine on, the disk failed - so we have to make you a new fresh image of your disk".

Some would go weak at the knees from such news, but I'd already backed up the entire disk, so I could laugh it off. And sure enough, they've given me a replacement machine with a new disk. Same model, same age and I've noticed the 'new image' seems to mean that a few popular office products seem to now close with mystery errors involving serious looking hexadecimal codes.

So perhaps Star Wars is right and we are closer to scruffy cyberpunk rather than gleaming sci-fi.

treasured?

Perhaps this week's budget speech by Darling was a clever ploy to camouflage whatever parlous state we are in fiscally. Everyone expected his delivery to be boring and by popular accounts it was more of an incantation, perhaps suited to a wizard from Harry Potter.

Most of the budget information had been leaked in advance, which used to be a sackable offence. Presumably nowadays its to give all the management accountants a chance to get their at-a-glance briefings prepared. It certainly meant that much of what he said was recited like so many lines from a dull spreadsheet.

And no 'special something' to brighten up the fagsgasnbooze increases.

Nada.

Yet a first budget, which would have been the ideal time for Darling to make his mark on something. Maybe he's already done that with his dithered assistance to Northern Rock's flailing deficit or the way he presided over the Department which lost 25 million citizen records.

Its likely that Pa Broon asked Alistair to keep a low profile as he's not already been fired for any of the above points. A hint now that the next election won't be until 2010, but maybe a separate bet whether Darling makes it that far. Unless, his near neighbour in Scotland, JK Rowling, gives him some new spells.