WOID XVIII-32. What's the difference between George Bush and Jerry Lewis?
[reprinted from WOID: a journal of visual language]
A: It looks as if George Bush has just about worn out his welcome in France.
Most American investors noticed the existence of a foreign bond market last week, when a series of massive selloffs in world markets triggered a near-collapse on American stock exchanges. Some American investors have been following a burgeoning scandal in France, where the selloff may have been triggered when a major financial institution, the Société Générale, panicked and sold short some 50 billion euros' worth of investments, leading to a loss for the bank itself of 5 billion euros, give or take a billion or two. Plenty of Frenchmen and women wondered aloud if this little mishap was really the doing of a single rogue trader as the bank's director claimed, or something sinister.
Well. A French web site says sinister - as sinister as the Lee Van Cleef character in Le Bon, la Brute et le Truand. Turns out a certain Robert M. Day placed a series of highly rewarding orders in the days preceding the collapse. Robert M. Day heads something called TCW (Trust Company of the West), which is partnered with Société Générale, which could make the trades a possible délit d'initié (insider trading).
Oh, and Robert M. Day is a major fundraiser for George Bush, an ex-member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and a participant in that shady area of Franco-American partnership that seems to slip effortlessly from US business to CIA-front businesses and back again.
Please tell me I'm making this up: you can't negotiate subsidiary rights on a real-life event.
- Hoipolloi Cassidy