Wise Guys...

Well the Spanish (mine too) PM managed to have his picture taken with the rest of the big boys.

But so did the Dutch PM.

Apparently the price paid by Spain for the picture was high according to the specialized press. The Dutch were invited. The meeting was with the lamest of the duck US presidents.

So after the Azores picture, Trafalgar, all the gold from the New World, Spain still willingly buys the Brooklyn Bridge.

Unbelievable...

Recompile The Move...

Ok it's hard to move across the ocean again and fix bugs but we have managed to fix some areas that were choking while recompiling: abstract classes + interfaces.

Still no departure date.

Moving to Denver this winter...

In an unusual turn of events, we are moving to the Rockies this Christmas.

Uninvited Guest...

Spain's PM is about to shoot himself in the foot: after crying and whining for weeks that he was not invited to the Financial Crisis Summit, it appears that France's PM is thinking about giving up his chair as EU president so Spain's PM could go.

Other EU members with stronger economies: Sweden (ABB, Volvo, Ericsson, Ikea) Holland (ING, ABN, Phillips, Shell) are out meeting. This was suposedly a European UNION.

Beware of what you ask for: Spain is not part of the G8 or G20, this PM has a history of diplomatic tantrums with the USA, Spain still is recipient of EU help. He has even made fun of fellow European PMs: France and Italy.

The first question would be: if Spain economy is so big , it maybe it doesn't need those moneys.

And now France's PM is willing to let him in. I wonder what price tag that chair has.

Unbelievable...

Open-Recession...

Recently, there was this thread on LinkedIn about an open-source project which lead me to think the following:

Everybody has benefited from OSS in one form or the other. Some others have contributed work.

But the interesting fact is that OSS was born during a period of abundance. How will it cope during global recession?

Do companies will have enough extra budget to continue support? Will individuals have the job security (in terms of income or available time) to contribute?

Hopefully, OSS will not suffer beyond repair for everyone's sake, but it will be an interesting development.

In-Out of the money...

Apparently Porsche acquired a huge chunk of VW in a well engineered derivatives operation that caught off-guard hedge funds worldwide, raising the capitalization of VW well beyond the total market cap of Ibex-35 (the leading stock index in Spain, this was according the local press)

The hedge funds are crying foul: this transaction puts in disrepute German markets. That is odd.The stock market has almost real-time, free information about any major exchange in the world.

What is clear is that if the hedge fund managers had information about Porsche bets, they would not have shorted VW. The derivatives market seems to be too asymmetric. It preys even on the predators.

Free Willy...

Has anyone heard about Canada lately? Not me. Apparently, they are happy, with a sound financial system, although a little bit cold. We have heard about everybody else.

So how come did Canada manage to avoid the storm and not Europe? After all Canada is a lot closer to USA than the EU is.

Some of its banks may be in trouble but given it is part of G8 and its economy is a lot larger than that of Iceland, there is barely any piece of news in all the financial and economics media about Canada.

Ahh, nothing can substitute good judgment.