Good News

Due to the murky way that financial regulation operates in Germany a number of hedge funds have been hit with a bill of around £24 billion. These are the fine/deranged dudes whose specialisation in the dodgy practice of short selling has not helped the current world shares downturn. They were gambling on the share price of VW going down while being unaware that Porsche had been buying up shares through intermediaries – this would illegal over here but is fine in Germany.

Good to see that they are getting the comeuppance which they deserve.

A Qantas flight from LA to Sydney lost the use of it's weather radar shortly after taking off, luckily an Air New Zealand flight to Auckland was flying not far in front of it. So the Qantas flight followed it to Auckland where the problem was resolved – good to have friends in your airspace.

Good to hear that someone is making a profit in these gloomy economic times, coming on the back of BP's $10 bn profits (up 148% from last year) and Shell's $10.9 bn profits (up 71%) we hear from Exxon Mobil. Spare a thought for these guys. they only made a profit of $14.8 bn in the third quarter – a disappointing increase of only 58%. expect to see their begging bowls any time now.