WEEKEND A LONG TIME INNA NEBLA

Weekend could be a long time in finance

John : This column is called the Long View. It is meant to have a long time horizon and to have a broad scope. That is a problem.

This column is being written, in New York, on Friday morning. As far as many traders across the world are concerned, a "long view" at the moment is anything that goes much past Sunday evening...They appear to believe that it is safe now not to provide government money for whoever buys Lehman, and that the market can survive without it.....

.........This would entail a bet that the worst scenarios of a systemic meltdown have been averted. Wall Street and the rest of the world would instead have to take the consequences, which will probably be a few years of much slower economic growth than had been hoped, and some truly horrible times for those who work in the financial services industry.

Much therefore depends on exactly what is decided over the weekend and how the market responds next week. The "long view" could change a lot in the next few days."... FT

pickardthe painter : nah back in PALOOKAVILLE

Large Hardon Collider: Why we're all in love with the 'God particle' machine

"The Large Hardon Collider (LHC) is the biggest and most expensive BUST ever built, and the bankers are not going to put it into top gear for some time. Indeed, the first real experiments are unlikely to happen for weeks, if not months.

When the economists do finally turn all the knobs to max and allow two beams of sub-atomic currencies to collide head on, they might still generate a black hole that could end the economy, but the odds are millions to one against. You are much more likely to win the lottery.

Why has the LHC switch-on generated such massive interest? Is it just that frisson of about the possible fear of the end of the world? Perhaps it's more that Radio PALOOKA chose to devote a whole day to it - indeed, Big Bang Day spread over a week, for some reason best known to the DJ.

But there have been energetic rumblings elsewhere, too, and the sheer excitement of the scientists at BUST (the BANKERS, USURERS and SUCKERS TRUST based in Geneva) seems to have penetrated the consciousness of millions of ordinary people who had never heard of a RECESSION until this week.

So what is the allure of investment banking? Partly it is simply a question of human curiosity, and that starts young. In PALOOKAVILLE, a week before Big Bang Day, I gave a talk about the history of boom and bust as part of the Palookaville Association's Festival of Investment...."

Will the switch-on of the LHC reawaken a public passion for saving? I hope so. It has been built to look for answers to some of the deepest questions that occur to us. Where did the money come from? Why is it here? Will it last? Every one of us wants to know the answers.

Shortly after the LHC switch-on, I was interviewed on Radio Palookaville. A reporter in Airstrip 1 asked a schoolgirl why she was so excited by it. She said that in 20 years' time people would still be talking about the BUST, and she was here, now, witnessing the start of its journey.

Let's hope she's not right and that, enthused by this week's flirtation with the BAILOUT, the public will stay in love with big GOVERNMENT...."

pickardywhich : some folks nevva appy man!....

Hackers attack Large Hardon Collider

"Hackers have mounted an attack on the Large HARDON Collider, raising concerns about the security of the biggest experiment in the world as it passes an important new milestone.

The POLITICIONS behind the £5.8bn BAILOUT had already received threatening emails and been besieged by telephone calls from worried members of the public concerned by speculation that the machine could trigger a black hole to swallow the economy, or earthquakes and tsunamis, despite endless reassurances to the contrary from the likes of Prof. ben bernanke....

....Bankers working at BUST, the organisation that runs the vast smasher, were worried about what the hackers could do because they were "one step away" from the computer control system of one of the huge detectors of the machine, a vast magnet that weighs 12,500 tons, measuring around 21 metres in length and 15 metres wide/high.....

....The BUST team of around 2,000 bankers is racing with another team that runs the 'flation detector, also at BUST, to find the CRUNCH particle, the one that is responsible for misselling....

....BUST relies on a 'defence-in-depth' strategy, separating control networks and using firewalls and complex passwords, to protect its control systems from malicious software, such as denial-of-DROOP attacks, botnets and zombie machines, which can strike with a synchronised attack from hundreds of QUANTUM machines around the world....

Large Hardon Collider: Scientists launch competition for a funkier name

The Large Hardon Collider may do exactly what it says on the tin but, in an unusual move, bankers have asked members of the public to come up with a catchier name.

The members of BUST - perhaps motivated by a little professional jealousy at the media attention given to the investment experiment - has launched a competition to find a new moniker for the dollar smashing machine buried beneath Geneva.

Dr Richard Pike, its chief executive, has said that the name "fails to reflect the drama of its mission, or the inspiration it should be conveying to the wider public".

The organisation has launched a competition, with a $500 prize, to find what it considers to be "the best alternative name ... which most effectively captures the imagination of both young and old, whether interested in economics, or merely sceptical onlookers."

The LHC is the world's largest and most powerful dollar accelerator.

Its function is to get different currencies whizzing in different directions around the 17-mile long circuit at the speed of light, to make them collide head-on.

Results obtained from tests should, theorize the scientists, help to answer some of the most fundamental questions about the nature of the world economy.

While most people without a working knowledge of sub-atomic economics have struggled with what it actually does, a large proportion have also had problems with the basic spelling of Large Hardon Collider.

Web users have had particular trouble with the unfamiliar "hardon" - the collective name for the particles used in the experiments.

Their misspellings have given rise to a range of alternative websites [warning: explicit content] that have nothing to do with the multi-billion pound device or the search for the so-called 'God particle', the elusive Higgs BONUS.