Why it is in YOUR OWN INTEREST not to strike or protest at this time (mid May 2010).

Screw the government, they are dead at the next election. I'm out for us now and I want to explain to you why our best option right now is to sit tight and ride this out.


But you need to understand what an "institutional speculator" is to understand. I'll do my best to keep this simple and amusing, but its important you DO understand.


A speculator is basically a glorified gambler. But a gambler backs a horse and his horse either wins or loses. Not so for the speculators. In their world the game plays like this:

They pick a horse (country) they dont like the look of and they bet AGAINST it. That is, they buy a sort of insurance that says "if the country goes broke, the holder is covered". Now, imagine all the countries are lined up in the starting blocks aaaaand... they're off....



Suddenly Greece is miles behind and Ireland, Spain and Portugal are bringing up the rear too.
Now, the speculators who bought this special kind of "insurance" against the bankruptcy of those countries, well.... they find themselves in possesion of a (suddenly) very valuable and sought after piece of paper eh??

I mean, wouldnt you like a "get out of jail free card" if you were heavily invested in the Greek government bonds?? Sure you would!



So the speculators sell their insurance and make a profit. (they arent stupid, they never had anything in vested in those countries in the first place, they just speculated that insurance for those countries might be very handy to someone soon.

Greece didnt need to go bankrupt for them to win, it just had to go down the tubes a bit from where it started. The speculators guessed right that it would, bought insurance cheap when the coutnry was kinda ok and sold it when it was looking dodgy. Nice chunk of change.



Now comes the interesting bit. The EU heads have actually done something clever. They put a big big BIG sack of money on the table in the middle of Europe and said to the markets "wherever you go to speculate, we'll prop up that government by letting them borrow money from this here big pile of dosh!".

Well, thats death to the speculators. Firstly their money could well be tied up in insurance that isnt going to pay off as described above because the target country wont be allowed to fail and everyone knows it so the value of any insurance is eroded!


Secondly, money invested in the stock market that doesnt return any profit is in fact making a loss because it could easily have been banked and made a few percent. Thats bad for the speculators, their bosses will see that as a LOSS.



Thirdly the country might even benefit from access to these new funds and then its AWFUL news for the speculators the country would become MORE secure and the insurance becomes LESS valuable... now they have made the cardinal sin of actually LOSING money. Bad bad bad. No bicuit.



So, there is significant risk of significant loss for them and the EU is standing there with a 1 trillion Euro budget ready to fight with. No institution wants to take that on. Its just too scary, they could get burned badly. Money is tight remember, even for banks!



So we're all good then?! Protest away?? Well no. If the speculators get a single strong signal that a country is internally going nuts, then EN MASSE they will attack. One or two of them would be no problem, but like pirahna the problem is when they all attack in a group.


What they NEED is a single kick off point, kind of like a shotgun start at a golf course, everyone gets a clear GO GO GO signal. For Greece it was the strikes which led to the IMF.

In every trading floor room I have ever been on there were constant displays of world news, SKy News, BBC, ABC, CNN etc on LCD tvs. We do NOT want to be on those screens. Ever.



What we need to be doing now is saying "nothing to see here, move along to someone else, we're gold".

Going out and protesting right now is NOT going to change anything, I'm sorry but do you really think it will? Has it ever before??


But what it will do is bring the dog-pack here en masse.

Save your anger for the election, contact your TD and wear his ear off, but to go on the streets and riot or appear to be supporting riots is lunacy.


If you are in the Public sector, you DO NOT WANT to see the IMF come here, they dont care about you and they arent elected so they dont care if you dont like their measures, they will simply take control of the government coffers and issue your bosses less payroll. It wont be a "cut" as such, they just simply wont pay you.

If you are in private sector, you might think "wooo, that sounds like fun, lets f*ck the PS again. Come on IMF". You are also nuts. Reaming the PS just means a whole pile of stoppages and our country, your country, gets trashed. Good luck selling your goods, or helping your boss sell his goods when no one can move in the cities and no one has any money to spend. Some of your customers are Public Sector remember...

So what do we do? Lie back and think of Ireland? Well, ironically, yes. We take this shafting because we have no choice, we havent had since NAMA. But we should remember this and when the time of reckoning comes (its called an election ) we screw these bastards to the wall.


Right to the motherf*cking wall.



But we dont screw ourselves. Not now... cos we are the only ones looking after us now. Think clearly, think with your heads.



DeV.