Dead Cat Bounce

And a big thank you to qljmgdsbufc@ yahoo.com...

2005-08-18T22:17:00.000Z

Latest Spam: "NEW HIGH QUALITY INCEST SITE"

High time. It's all those low-quality incest sites that really get me down.

Even dumber than Smart Money...

2005-08-15T17:33:00.000Z

Very interesting article in Slate referencing this working paper from the NBER in the US. Money quote:

When they crunched the numbers, Lamont and Frazzini found that for every period longer than three months (and out to five years), the stocks receiving the highest flows of new mutual-fund money performed significantly worse than the stocks that received the lowest flows of new money. Over a three-year period, the difference was 8 percentage points a year. In other words, individual investors had lousy timing, and their efforts to chase returns ended up costing them dearly. As a result, the authors conclude that "individual investors in aggregate are unambiguously dumb."

I haven't had a chance to pick through the paper in much detail yet, and a couple of queries spring to mind. The results seem strongest (predictably) for 1998-2003 - a period when the split between value and growth stocks was most pronounced. This makes me wonder how much of the effect is beta (buying anything at the top) vs alpha (picking stocks that were simply dogs). More interesting for me personally would be to see if the same principles apply to hedge funds and their holdings - Vega springs to mind as a fund which saw huge inflows after 2002-03 then nosedived. Both the authors of the paper and the Slate piece wonder if hedge funds don't pick up the cash that was dropped by retail. This would suggest that the mass of hedge fund managers are systematically smarter than real money (as opposed to being on average leveraged long a market that was on average rising).

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time wondering what "everybody else" is long - be it the IMM report on Non-Commercial (ie speculative) positioning in Treasuries and the Mexican peso, the BM&F report on foreign holdings of the Brazilian Real future, or even lord help us, bids in the Bratislava repo auction. This paper would certainly suggest that concern about the "technicals" is clearly part of the job.

You bellicose hooligan, we will thwart your frantic attempts to stifle us!

2005-08-15T14:29:00.000Z

Marvellous. Via The Register

Motivational techniques

2005-08-15T09:11:00.000Z

Harsh on an 18-year old clerk. Just returned from sickleave with meningitis.

THE Bank of Scotland was yesterday accused of humiliating its staff after a
teenage teller had a cabbage placed on his desk in full view of customers. It
was a motivational strategy.

Retail banking outdoes investment variety for once...

Unions fear banks are increasing pressure on employees. Last year, staff at the
Edinburgh Park call centre of HSBC were made to take off clothes for failing to
reach sales targets.

Sell because the Lizards say so

2005-08-13T16:48:00.000Z

In today's FT Philip Coggan puffs Mean Markets and Lizard Brains (really) the latest attempt to

translate the principles of behavioural finance into practical advice. It is not so much a get rich quick tome as a useful guide to avoiding poverty.

The argument is that evolution has left us with "lizard brains" - which cause us to irrationally beleive that recent patterns will extend themselves. The advice? Move to cash, live in a small house, repay your debts. Ah yes, "the end is nigh" in new clothing. And like so much of the latest round of bubble-spotting noticeably short on falsifiable predictions. Yes, cash and TIPs/index-linked gilts will definitely reduce the risk of you losing money. This is true in any environment.

The core of the argument:

“We have just lived through an atypical and unsustainable financial period. In recent decades, stock prices have risen at almost three times their natural speed limit. Similarly, interest rates have fallen towards zero, fuelling the real estate market with cheap mortgages.”
Burnham points out that, between 1987 and mid-2004, US GDP rose by 142 per cent, US corporate profits grew by 233 per cent and share prices (ignoring dividends) rose by 282 per cent. Such a divergence, he argues, is unsustainable. It is more natural for profits to rise in line with the economy.

Meanwhile, even the bear market of 2000-03 has not dented the optimism of much of Wall Street. In 2003, even the most bearish of investment bank strategists recommended that investors place 45 per cent of their portfolios in stocks; most recommended an allocation of 60-70 per cent.

In contrast, when shares were cheap in 1982, and set to begin a long bull market, equities were a widely derided investment class. In 1980, just 5.7 per cent of all US households owned any mutual funds.

Well duh. A large allocation to stocks implies that you think they will outperform bonds and cash, not that profits will grow faster that the economy. Or maybe you expect inflation. And low interest rates - at least as long as Asia is content to pump liquidity into the global economy (something that speculators are noticeably more relaxed about than economists) are arguably more of a return to the historical norm than was the unusual spike in real rates that began in the 1970s. There is at least a case to argue that the rise in leverage in the Anglo-Saxon world is entirely rational and is only unprecedented because of prior regulation and unsophisticated personal finance systems (OK, ok there's a case. Doesn't mean I necessarily beleive you shouldn't wait to buy that flat). Either way, the case for equities (or risk assets generally) is not that one is optimistic, but that this is the best of a (possibly bad) bunch.

It is legitimate to take the DeLong/Krugman/Angry Bear view that we are perched on the edge of a precipice and a good portfolio is 50% cash, 50% tinned food. It is horseshit to argue that we only got here because the world suddenly mistook a one-off adjustment for permanent conditions.

Even now borrow seems attractive because real yields are low. Such conditions cannot last forever (-).

Forever no. Why not five years? Or a year? Or at least to the end of the year? What's going to cause a large rise in real yields? I can see what can whack growth, what can kill profits, but real yields? If you think there's going to be a spike in inflation, you should be borrowing fixed. And deflation doesn't square with the Chinese suddenly getting religion and moving the CNY to 5/$. Now who's being irrational. A belief in mean-reversion is no more inherently sensible than a belief

Good news for film buffs

2005-08-13T08:48:00.000Z

Blockbuster - home of 300 copies of the latest Adam Sandler piece of shit, retarded counter assistants and not much else is going down the tubes. Looks like there are more people interested films not aimed at "teenage male mouth-breathers" (William Goldman) and they've jumped ship.

Companies can bounce back from most things but not obviously the death of their business model. Netflix in the States is roaring ahead while Screenselect seems to be doing pretty well here (I adore Screenselect and have heard good things about lovefilm).

On a related subject, Roger Ebert, the doyen of US film critics (remember times pre-Jonathon Ross when we had decent high-profile film critics) administers one of the most magisterial bitch-slappings I can remember:

Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times listed this year's Best Picture Nominees and wrote that they were "ignored, unloved and turned down flat by most of the same studios that ... bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to 'Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,' a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."
Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: "Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind ... Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers."

Reading this, I was about to observe that Schneider can dish it out but he can't take it. Then I found he's not so good at dishing it out, either. I went online and found that Patrick Goldstein has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists' Guild award for lifetime achievement.

Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks.

But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo while passing on the opportunity to participate in Million Dollar Baby, Ray, The Aviator, Sideways, Finding Neverland. As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.

Liberty: Enough Already

2005-08-11T21:36:00.000Z

I would really really like to be able to turn on the TV without seeing an interview with Shami Chakrabarti. Message to the BBC, Sky and ITV: if I wanted to see this much of the woman I'd start stalking her.

Other Things that cheered me up today

2005-08-11T20:50:00.000Z

A very good beer ad (via Hit and Run)

Some very good religious jokes (via the Guardian) and comments by a different breed of Christian than the ones I usually avoid.

A very good spot by Harry's Place

Some good new blogs I hadn't seen before.

The sharp drop in the Brazilian Real.

Schadenfreude corner

2005-08-11T20:35:00.000Z

It ain't as easy as it looks. Around a dozen people today drew my attention to the demise (FT - subscription) of the Global Asset Management Persaud Global Currency Fund. Now, usually a tiny ($15million) fund going tits-up wouldn't even rate a mention, but Avinash Persaud is different for being 1) immensely clever and respected in the industry 2) widely regarded as - ahem - not overburdened with humility. His diatribes about the extent to which Hedge Funds rely on Value at Risk and are therefore doomed to repeat the disasters of 1998 were little treasured by the industry.

He prefers old-fashioned government supervision that's less concerned with momentary trends in asset prices and more concerned with risky practices--such as having your assets in one currency, your liabilities in another.

From the FT:

The Global Asset Management Persaud Global Currency fund closed due to a combination of disappointing performance and a large redemption. The fund had made a loss of 12.7 per cent since its inception in December 2003.

[...] "A number of currency funds have closed," said Mr Persaud. "It has been a particularly difficult time for systematic approaches.

CTAs and momentum-driven funds have indeed had a tough time of it.

[...] These funds won a temporary reprieve as the dollar renewed its slide in the fourth quarter of 2004, enabling the sector to recoup most of its losses. However, 2005 is also believed to have been problematic. Funds that started the year betting on a continuing sell-off of the greenback were caught out by the dollar's bounce.

And the lessons? One, it's a lot easier to say "you're all doomed" than to make money. Two, trend-spotting moving average models are having a tough time of it - but not because there aren't any trends any more...look at a graph of any of the big crosses.

No fan of Hitchens but....

2005-08-10T21:49:00.000Z

This is depressing. Christopher Hitchens in Slate:

The New York Times ran a fascinating report (subscription only), under the byline of James Glanz, on July 8. It was a profile of Dr. Alaa Tamimi, the mayor of Baghdad, whose position it would be a gross understatement to describe as "embattled." Dr. Tamimi is a civil engineer and convinced secularist who gave up a prosperous exile in Canada to come home and help rebuild his country. He is one among millions who could emerge if it were not for the endless, pitiless torture to which the city is subjected by violent religious fascists

And today

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The mayor of Baghdad, who vowed to save the broken city after Saddam Hussein's fall, seemed himself to have fallen victim to its growing chaos on Tuesday, saying gunmen ousted him and installed a rival.

Alaa al-Tamimi said he was not at his office at the time but 120 gunmen installed Hussein al-Tahhan in his place on Monday.

Golden Age of Intellectual Discourse

2005-08-10T12:52:00.000Z

Brad deLong, Angry Bear and Brad Setser point out to someone called Donald Luskin: Your arguments don't make sense, followed by some fairly basic international capital accounting identities (deLong and Angry Bear) and a link to the data that illustrates the point (Setser).

Mr Luskin's response: You're fat.

It's like the discourses of the Enlightenment brought back to life.

Damon Runyon Quotes

2005-08-09T19:43:00.000Z

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -- but that's the way to bet

One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider.

Trust, but verify

Always try to rub up against money, for if you rub up against money long enough, some of it may rub off on you

Much as he is opposed to law - breaking, he is not bigoted about it

Truly literature's gain was investment's loss. Link

Blowing Bubbles - Trickier than it looks

2005-08-09T19:20:00.000Z

WhenTwo Jags, the Guardian and the Economist agree on anything, it's a foolhardy investor who bets on that "fact" being right. Thus: house prices - too expensive?

Notwithstanding what certain people who are clearly cleverer than me think (and they include some of the most interesting and clever blogs I read), bubble identification - especially how to make money out of it - is a lot trickier than popular wisdom suggests. Take the US/UK Housing bubble as probably the most obvious representation of the current liquidity glut. Yes there are lots of signs that valuations are not justified by fundamentals, but calling tops is awfully perilous, and professionals generally are very wary of it.

Take, for example, the Equity "bubble" of the 1990s. Maggie Mahar's wretched bestseller "Bull" is a sustained exercise in twenty-twenty hindsight. Throughout the book, one of Mahar's favourite authorities is David Tice, who runs the Prudent Bear Stock Fund - a good short fund, which returned not far short of 80% in 2002. But the trouble with "calling tops" is that you have to get the timing right. Had you invested $100 in Tice's fund on, say 5th December 1996 when Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan pointed to "irrational exuberance" (called, perhaps, a bubble), at no point since then would you have made a profit in the fund. The Prudent Bear's NAV bottomed at 40% of its end-96 level in late 2000, touched that level again in October '02, and is now worth around 60c in the 1996 dollar. Admittedly, the numbers I quote don't include dividends but that shouldn't fundamentally change the picture. An investment in the S&P at that time would have returned 120% to July '02, and even today would be a healthy 95% up from Dec. None of this is intended to disrespect Mr Tice - this, as I say, is a good bear fund (and the website is well worth a look too) - merely to point out that the distinction between being right early and being wrong is, for an investor, often academic.

Beware especially of bubbles called by the Economist magazine. Quite apart from "Drowning in oil" ($15-a-barrel oil is ridiculously expensive), Buttonwood last year called Emerging Markets Debt a bubble. Over a year on, the asset class has returned 19.2%. Now, fine, this can possibly end in tears. But calling "bubble" just because prices have been moving strongly is lazy. And this is true of property as of anything else. House prices unsustainably high? Very probably. Doomed to collapse and take the world down with it? Wouldn't bet on it.

2005-08-08T12:09:00.000Z

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Update: move along folks, nothing to see here....

Always Fucking Watch the Fucking Two-Year

2005-08-08T12:00:00.000Z

...runs the only truly invaluable piece of investment wisdom in Liar's Poker. Quite.

The most reliable indicator of US monetary conditions is giving what I would call a reasonably clear signal.

Beautifully Put

2005-08-04T10:35:00.000Z

it is a bubble...

ONE morning in 1929, while having his shoes shined, Joseph P. Kennedy is said to have gotten some advice: buy stock in R.C.A. and U.S. Steel. Instead, he sold everything.

"When the shoeshine boy starts giving you tips," he supposedly concluded, "it's time to get out of the market."

Today's equivalent aphorism might go like this: When two cable channels offer competing reality shows about property speculation - called, no kidding, "Flip This House" (A&E) and "Flip That House" (Discovery Home) - it's time to get out of real estate.

Londyn

2005-08-02T23:46:00.000Z

As you might have noticed there are rather a lot of Eastern Europeans in London at the moment. To the point where the bomb attacks on July 7th killed 3 Poles (leaving them second only to Evil Islamic Fundamentalist Cunts in terms of groups of the dead thoroughly overrerpresented among the dead).

Now admittedly I'm a tiny bit pissed at the moment - out drinking with Polish friends. But apparently Poland is fascinated by the British response to the attacks. Indeed there appears to be some surprise as to why London has not seen a massive popular backlash against Islam* (the magazine cover below says "Genocide in the 21st Century").

* note: "funny looks on the Tube" don't actually count as persecution.

It takes someone foreign being surprised at London's reaction - and thinking it's weird - to make me actually quite proud of it.

Scores on the Doors

2005-08-02T09:23:00.000Z

There are some words where something seems to get lost in translation. For example, there's some word in Arabic which means "barking mad conspiracy theorist" but gets translated as "moderate". Similarly, with "Arbitrage": the dictionary definition means to buy something on one market and sell the same thing on another market for a higher price. You might expand it slightly to mean any exploitation of regulatory or informational discrepancies to produce risk-free gain. Risk-free is sort of important here.

Now, one major private bank prints a weekly roundup of how its approved hedge funds have done. This includes 6 pages of "Arbitrage" strategies. Convertible Arbitrage (essentially pretending that you can mimic the elements of a convertible bond) has managed to vaporize around a billion dollars so far this year (average return of -5.7% this year in Global, -7% in the US). The "statistical arbitrage" funds have managed a more respectable 3-4% ytd. But overall, hedge funds not doing anything to justify "2+20%" fees (2% a year fixed, plus 20% of returns in excess of cash rates). The only double-digit returns (among asset classes) are in Emerging Market Equities and Energy sector equities - both areas where you'd have done at least as well buying a nice, plain-vanilla mutual fund. And remember this is at the end of July, a month when we've all been patting ourselves on the back. But it gets worse: funds of funds: Looking at the Barclay Group Fund of Funds returns - a princely 1.23% year to date. That's less than leaving the money in the bloody Nationwide. Now a fund of funds will charge two layers of fees one for the FoF and one for the funds themselves. This is not sustainable. The future for this industry is a slow bleed, not a collapse (no matter what the Sunday Times says), but that could be painful enough.

Memo to self

2005-08-02T07:08:00.000Z

I will make more money if I start my day by checking the markets rather than looking at nutty ultraright US blogs.
Won't be as much fun though

Hamas charm offensive

2005-08-01T18:49:00.000Z

(from Hit and Run)

"A love letter to the whole world from Hamas"

Just in case you didn't feel that the death of King Fahd was enough for one day.

No man is an island, entire of itself; ... Any man’s death diminishes me, " (John Donne, Meditations)
some more than others...

Pensions and How not to understand them

2005-08-01T17:58:00.000Z

Bashing the New York Times isn't a big thing for me (Lord knows it's a better paper than anything the UK has to offer) but there's a piece on pensions today that I think sets a tone for what we're going to see a lot more of this side of the pond since Gordo's big bombing raid.

Background: United Airlines has walked away from its pension fund as it came out of Chapter11 bankruptcy, leaving the PBGC (the"insurance scheme" for company pensions) to pick up the pieces. Now, beneficiaries are discovering the pot is half-empty.

There's all sorts of weird stuff in here

Pension investing is largely unregulated

That would be apart from the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 presumably - 50-odd pages from what I remember from my long-only days.

But the crux of the article is this:

United's actions offer a typical example of how most companies manage their pension funds. Its portfolio may look aggressive in hindsight - including high-yield bonds in companies like Adelphia and Bethlehem Steel that eventually went bankrupt, technology stocks that evaporated when the bubble burst and an assortment of private partnerships.

But the general approach was in keeping with what most companies do: about 60 percent stocks, 30 percent bonds and a mixture of "alternatives" including real estate and private equity investments. Local governments often invest their pension funds much more aggressively.

There are a hundred reasons - starting with the age of the workforce - why an allocation to equities might be smart. But the whole paragraph ignores diversification - if you held Bethlehem Steel and Adelphia, you almost certainly held bonds from other companies which came good over this period - and paid enough interest to compensate for your losses. Look at the data - high-yield debt returns more than governments over time. The point of the "over time" is - make sure you're diversified. Any smart person looking after their own financial future puts money in a variety of asset classes - why should workers get second class treatment?

My second argument is a little more two-sided - the amount of fees paid to professionals. Far be it from me to say that consultants like Russell earn their money (how many top-rank investment professionals turn down the high-pressure, high reward life of a money manager or trader to spend years drawing efficient frontiers?). But still, the article says that the fund was charged fees of around US$125million over the last 5 years - that's on a fund of over US$10billion. Take a look at the fees on a mutual fund for retail investors before you start describing that as a rip-off. You get serious discounts for bulk.

Yes United's scheme was incompetently-run, was given bad advice and clearly paid way too little in during the fat years. Yes, pension fund got screwed (although as the article spells out, the union backed management's dumber schemes). The answer is to improve accounting standards, not to lock pension funds into low-yielding government bonds - which would simultaneously starve companies of capital.

Reports of the Death of Hedge Funds Exaggerated...

2005-07-28T19:12:00.000Z

As the Times reported today. To the point where they're running out of names

"All the Greek gods were taken."

So were many animals, mountain ranges, rivers, roads -- even solar systems.

He and his partners slogged through maps, the Internet, Latin words and suggestions from friends before finding a suitable name for their firm, which oversees about $100 million. "It was harder than naming my children," says the father of two. They settled on Pike Place Capital Management, after a prominent farmers' market in Seattle, the city where Mr. Ware was born.

(WSJ by subscription)

Eurohedge reports that funds on average returned a princely 1.3% in June, bringing H1 returns to a less than stunning 3.4%. OK, it's not the GM-driven meltdown we were led to expect in March, but it's not going to pay for the wine collections either. Moral? In a goldrush, sell shovels, don't go prospecting. Never mind the fees the prime brokers and (hah!) "liquidity providers" are making - I suspect there'll be a reckoning there - look at the behind the scenes people charging non-refundable fees. Hedge-fund administrators (the accountants) basically, are currently behaving like spoilt princesses, dictating the terms on which new funds can be launched. Ours is by no means the worst.

And the lawyers? Don't get me started...

Tired of unpatriotic lefties doing their country down?

2005-07-28T18:59:00.000Z

There's at least one rightwing blogger who's prepared to even things up by standing with the mullahs against our decadent way of life. The usually-entertaining Laban Tall crosses a line for me here...

having chucked out the cultural bathwater, you can't put the 'respect agenda' baby back in.

"Ziauddin Sardar wrote yesterday that “the moral values that guide (Muslims) do have a place in Britain”. Up to a point: on homosexuality and women’s place we will always differ."

There we are. The bedrock of British values as seen by Libby - the unnegotiables. Uphill gardening lessons in school and children raised (when not aborted) by anyone except their mothers.

Hmm...maybe we could do something about the "uphill gardeners"...I dunno, bury them alive or drop walls on them?

Dwarf "Not Airborne"

2005-07-28T10:13:00.000Z

From the reliably entertaining Trader magazine

DANNY: What Dwarf Tossing?

The Dwarf hired to perform at the
notorious 2003 Fidelity bachelor party now
suggests he was never
airborne

Whole thing - complete with discussion of velcro.

Touching

2005-07-28T10:03:00.000Z

Now I tend to have trouble with Russians and have been none-too impressed with the Guardian recently, but this poem gave me pause. Maybe I see my own attitudes reflected.

"Never Been Wrong" Robertson

2005-07-28T09:40:00.000Z

Now this is interesting. Got an email from my coverage at (Gouging Nasty Broker):

Legendary Funds Manager Predicts Utter Global Collapse Stemming
FromBursting of Property Bubble

Blames Bush-Cheney "regime

In a recent interview on CNBC with Ron Insana, one of the "old-timer"
fundsmanager, Julian Robertson, predicted "utter global collapse" as
aconsequence of the bursting of the world-wide property bubble. Often
called"Never Been Wrong Robertson", the former head of Tiger Management (once
thelargest hedge fund in the world), is extremely worried about the
speculativebubble in real estate.
....
"More importantly, and I'm trying to think how we imply this or how we express this to the people, whatextraordinary times we are living in and how the destruction of the planet has been engineered by the Bushonian Cabal from 1980 to 1992, and then from2001 to present, which has effectively destroyed the economic liquidity of the planet," he said. Robertson ended the interview by saying that he hopeshe is not alive to see this. "The lucky ones are the ones who are my age now," he said.

...traced back - in the email - to this site (subscription, so I can't check the link).

Now, "Never Been Wrong" Robertson gets a good laugh anyway remembering just how many spectacularly wrong calls took Tiger down (and yes I am aware of how right JR was before he started beleiving his own hype). A quick Google discovers that Robertson "never said them things" (Hat-tip to otherwise distressing Red State Instababy Mover Mike ) but that some legitimate concerns about a US property bubble have been conflated into wingnut conspiracy theories (the Al Martin site is a cracker).

Most interesting is how a once-great, now-discredited hedgefund giant is the sort of authority now invoked in apocalyptic bubble calls.

Bring it on

2005-07-27T09:29:00.000Z

WASHINGTON, DC—President Bush officially responded to the latest round of London transit bombings Monday, challenging terrorists to "do their worst." Said Bush, in a televised statement from the Oval Office: "The proud and resilient people of London can take anything the forces of evil and cowardice can throw at them. They will never live in fear of you. Bring it on." Prime Minister Tony Blair thanked Bush for his comments, inviting him to visit London and ride the Underground in a show of solidarity.

The Onion

You thought Respect couldn't stoop any lower?

2005-07-26T20:39:00.000Z

Eric Lee knows better

I probably shouldn't post this one...

2005-07-26T20:21:00.000Z

Via Harry's Place

London copes.

2005-07-26T20:17:00.000Z

Update: Shame, I really thought this one had the ring of truth