Financial Betting Articles

Two things.

First. You will have noticed that the Dow was off yesterday. Over 241 points. For good measure, Lehman Brother Holdings was off 6.7%. That's over 85% from its peak, by far the biggest share price fall of a major bank.

Lehman fell after analysts suggested that interest from the state owned Korean Development Bank was softer than originally believed after a spokesman for KDB pointed out that "When my boss said he was interested in a dog he really meant a dog."

Howling about its plight at the bottom of the share league aside, is Lehman a dog? Not really. It's worked hard to provide cash-lines for the year to come, divested itself of some of its more toxic debts (ok, more are expected, it's still one of the most exposed to US mortgages) and looks likely to put its investment arm on the block, raising around $9 billion.

It's one even I'm going to watch closely. Many fund managers and traders exist to hurt companies. Lehman Brothers are running at the back of the pack and the hunters cannot, in their laziness, choose another target. With another set of bad results they'll pounce and we have a floundering bank. But with such a run in the management team - the Fed! - must be able to keep this one afloat.

If Lehman were to go under that really would mark a new blow in this credit crunch. (Am I even allowed to tell you that I had lunch with an investment banker yesterday who believes UK housing will drop 60-80% from where we are now??) With such a chance to avert such a calamity for the bank it would tell us just how out-of-control the powers that be are. And that would be a tad unnerving.

And yet... Isn't there part of us that wants Lehman - or a major bank - to go under? Just for the poison-drawing cathartic hell of it? Some dark part of our minds that hopes we can mark the real bottom of this almost-recession with the death of a big player - in the same way that we hope the psycho will shoot the guy standing next to us with his last bullet. Fine, beat me to a pulp with the butt of the gun, but the sharp little bullet, oh puh-lease use it on the geriatric charity-working Nun standing next to me.

Which is probably another way of saying we haven't got a clue how to navigate our way through this quagmire of an economic downturn. And, Lord of the Flies style, we quickly sink to the level of the baying mob, desperate for a sacrificial lamb to appease the Recession Gods. Desperate. Really.

I haven't got the slightest view on Lehmans. The bear-baiting of the media muddies the thinking and I won't pretend to have sifted through their numbers to have my own verdict. I think their situation has taken on an unfortunate life of its own. More pagan than economic. But watch this - their - space.

Second? Never trust an article that starts with a pun.

Yesterday's 241.8 fall was the largest on Wall Street for over a month

FTSE has risen by 150.9 in the month of August

Despite DAX hitting a high of 6609.63 mid August it has fallen to 6296.95 this month

62% of billionaires are married to brunettes

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