My del.icio.us bookmarks for January 10th through January 12th
January 12th, 2009
These are my links for January 10th through January 12th:
- FT.com / Companies / Food & Beverage - ‘Greed’ blamed for pub closures - "Private equity groups and property investors are having a “pretty disastrous” impact on the British pub industry, the founder and chairman of JD Wetherspoon has warned."
I think it was Aristotle who said that you cannot make money from money. You can make money from pubs. You can't when you turn them into a form of financial engineering. Then we all lose
- Mapeley investors in row over bond issue - Times Online - Will HMRC's landlord go bust?
When you offer bonds with a 20% yield you know something is horribly wrong
It's a hedge fund in all but name - I don't give it long
And what then? Do the leases revert to HMRC?
- Operation Wickenby suspect Philip Eric de Figueiredo bailed in Jersey | The Australian - How come I missed this?
Why aren't I surprised that Jersey is involved?
- Op-Ed Columnist - Eight Years of Madoffs - NYTimes.com - No government is perfect - we all know that - they're made up of human beings
But Bush turned corruption into an art form
- FSA fines insurer Aon £5.25m for corruption control failures | - I'll guarantee these funds went to tax havens
Any respectable business should avoid them like the plague
Looks like the FSA got something right
But maybe the fine wasn't big enough
“I think it was Aristotle who said that you cannot make money from money. ”
That was part of his argument against the charging of interest. An argument that I’m pretty sure we all reject these days, no?
Tim
Heard of Islamic finance Tim?
How all inclusive is your ‘we’?
And can you be absolutely sure you’re right to reject their opinion?
Richard
Creg
Let’s stop dealing with the avoidance industry - which much of Islamic finance is - and deal with the fundamental question
Tim made a generalisation- I said some won’t agree and asked him to consider their position. I didn’t say some try to get round it and suggested he condoned it
Richard
Islam is not the only religion to have a ban on interest - usury is also prohibited in the Old Testament.
However, I do not believe that a total ban on interest is necessary under Islamic principles. The prohibition on interest is there to protect the weaker party who is not able to negotiate the interest rate offered. Too much unaffordable debt can will end up with people as debt slaves in perpetuity, and this prohibition protects the vulnerable. If there was equality of bargaining power between lendor and borrower, there would be no exploitation of the borrower and so interest payments would be permitted.
Operation Wickenby - How come I missed this?
I presume you mean how did you miss Mr de Figueiredo’s arrest, as you mention Philip Egglishaw, another partner of Strachans under investigation by the Australian authorities as part of Operation Wickenby, in your post ‘Jersey - riddled with corruption’ on the 4 January 2008.
Mr de Figueiredo’s arrest was between Christmas and New Year and only reported, as far as I am aware, in Australia and Jersey.
The most recent overview of Operation Wickenby is the Sydney Morning Herald’s concise article on 1 Jan 2009 ‘The chance find that led to Wickenby’
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-chance-find-that-led-to-wickenby/2008/12/31/1230681578077.html
If you want more simply google ‘egglishaw’