Confessions of a Wino

Good evening credit crunchers, how are your bank shares doing?  Yes I know, mine too.  With the sole exception of HSBC.  With a much higher than average capital ratio, HSBC shares have risen 4% this year, whilst other banks (e.g RBS, HBOS) have tanked to one fifth of their recent value, and my old mate, Mr Bradford is owned by the British Government whilst erstwhile Mr Bingley has emigrated to Santander in Spain.  Luckily I sold B & B at about £2 while the credit crunch was a mere cream cracker.  They traded at 20 pence on the day they were nationalised.  I would have sold all my shares, but which bank could you trust your cash with?

It is not just banks, all capital expenditure has been frozen at a corporate and personal level.  How many people do you know buying a new car at the moment?  A new phone?  A new TV?  Heating oil?  Food?  Chateau Latour?  Nope.  The world is frozen with fear and we are riding an apocalyptic stallion of self fulfilling prophecy into a deep depression.

And if you want to dig yourself out of a depression, you will need cheap alcohol as your spade.  You could do worse than trying to cheer yourself up with this New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, at £8.95 from the Wine Society, a mere fraction of the price of the Cloudy Bay you used to drink in better times.

Auntsfield Long Cow 2007 is pale, grassy and full of cats’ piss.  (For the keen grammatinarianisticians amongst you, the pungency is such that I think there was more than one cat).  The acidity, though, is good and there is plenty of white fruit.

For the few remaining bulls amongst you, if your bank shares are still heading south, (and you can no longer sell them short), why not take a long position on this cow?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 9:07 pm and is filed under new zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.