We’re now into the nth attempt to plug the gusher that’s spilling out barrel loads of dinero for BP (and death by toxic suffocation for animals, and soon, human beings in the food chain). So it surprises no one that BP has now issued one metric tonne of press releases talking up its PR activities, ...

At the risk of sounding like Tony Bennett, we’d like to point out what a difference a week makes. 168 little hours. De-risking is not only back as an amuse-bouche, but is now the soup, the main course, the cheese plate, the dessert, and the espresso as well. Uncle Bill from PIMCO says that hedge ...

After winning the battle of Lumpini, Abhisit discovers that Thailand is a pretty big country to manage, as irritating little insurrections break out all over the place. Thailand government shuts down banks until Friday to prevent capital flight, just in case rich people didn’t hear that the battle against protesters had been won, and that ...

The Thai Baht/SET bailout continues apace. In order to save Thailand from breaking up, the Abhisit administration has now decided to clean the streets of the nonsense-spouting rural vermin that have infested the pristine, economic-value-gener ating streets around Nana Plaza. Keep your camera phones handy for scenes of slaughter – women, children and foreigners included …

Even hedge funds can learn a few new tricks. Now that they have given up on the intolerable public sector intrusion into their no-lose cash-generating activities, hedge funds are following Burmese generals and Indonesian kleptocrats into the new casinos in “the heart of Asia”. Going back on a recurring theme of this blog, hedge funds ...

Posted without comments. (but you might want to add strains of “Les Miserables” soundtrack in the background) From Guardian “Thailand protests: The valiant dead” The longer this crisis continues the harder it becomes to characterise solely as a colour-coded clash between two tribes The Paris commune, it is not. Nor will anything resembling the basilica …

From the burning tyres in Bangkok, rise the prospect of the independent Democratic Republic of North Thailand. (Southern restive Muslim states welcome to join as trading partner). Since this is the year of “things being worse than expectations”, and as the carnage continues in BKK, all we need now is for a few well-positioned photo ...

Kids gloves off, gentlemen: it’s time to Live Free or Die Hard. A sniper bullet ended Seh Daeng’s interview with the IHT, which gets you wondering, what’s the message that the army is trying to send to various parties involved, by slaying a Red Shirt leader in full view of the world media? For the ...

Just a few random snippets here and there, talking about my favourite property punt location right now: China. Summary: Beijing property values plunge more than 30%, Shanghai is next, people generally believe that local governments are the culprits behind property bubble, and rich Chinese developers say “let them eat cake” (See shoe throwing incident in ...

Remember the Iceland volcano with the unpronounceable name? (which, according to my simple minded theory is that the inability of news anchors to pronounce said name was main reason why Eyjafjallajokulisare almuthafuckanametosa y has generally fallen off radar of MSM) Well, it’s boiling up again, shutting down airspace over parts of Europe over the weekend, and now ...