This listless, low volume, boring market has myself and Potter looking back fondly at the good old days. The days when market makers and traders were allowed, indeed encouraged by their banks, to take risks. If nothing much was going on you would feed a rumour into the market and try and spoof everyone or else go out to lunch for 4 hours with your bookie. Sadly most traders today seem to be graduates of the Colonel Sanders School of headless Chickens and a Brokers Expense account would not stretch to a Fish Supper at Clarkies Fish Chip Emporium.
My batteries are definitely flat.For the first time in a decade I have been unable to come up with a credible April Fool. I thought that, in a belated show of humour, that the EU had stepped into the breech, with news that the fledgling Euro army have launched its first military operation, but alas this is no joke, well not in the April Fools sense. A force of 320 "Eufor" troops, half of whom are French, have taken up peace keeping duties in Macedonia and the aim is that at some time in the future this "rapid reaction" force will be increased to 60,000 men, 100 warships, 400 aircraft and be capable of worldwide operations lasting up to a year, including, and I kid you not, " heavy duty peacekeeping."
"Rapid Reaction" and "Heavy duty peacekeepng?" Excuse me but if the French are to make up half the force then the only thing that will be rapid will be the rate of the retreat and the only "heavy duty" will be the haende hoch (hand up) exercises.
A new month means that its time for Muppet of the Month. Potter wants to give it to Jacques Chirac but I think thats too easy. Instead I am going to award it to a country which has only been done once before. Last year I was forced to give the award to Germany after they voted Schroeder back into power but now I am giving it to a country because I have no idea who their Prime Minister is. This shows the irrelevence of the country as I am pretty good at world leaders. I know that the Prime Minister of Cameroon is Peter Mafany Musonge and I even know the Minister of Finance for Kazakhstan is Mazhit Esenbaev but I cannot for the fife of me tell you who leads Belgium. Whoever leads the "tank park of europe" has managed to make an irrrelevent country and..............................sorry who were we talking about?
Harry
