...Pretty Bubbles In The Air.
Despite an unprecedented 0.5% interest rate cut across the major global financial centres, the British government producing a £400 billion bank rescue package (equal at current exchange rates to the US $700 billion bailout), and a meeting in America for all the people who caused this financial tsunami in the first place, the FTSE lost 240 points yesterday and has plummeted a further 50 points today.
Despite this massive global financial stimulus to the corrupt banking system...
The heavily negative market sentiment combining with personal psychologies that are frazzled by new market experience, and an inability to model the holistic picture regarding risk, is driving the market down.
No amount of the privileged undertaking talking shops and photo opportunities is going to change that.
For goodness sake, Iceland went bust on Tuesday.
The 'west' could not afford to save it.
The Russians stepped in despite losing 20% of their stockmarket value on the same day, after repeated interruptions for insider market adjustments.
The geopolitical element of this crisis reared its head when the British government stepped in to sue Iceland over the bank deposits in the UK, effectively freezing the assets of a sovereign country that was, until Tuesday, a partner.
Today, the Icelandic bourse suspended trading after a third bank sought the rescue of the government...
...the bankrupt government.
In the summer, we highlighted concerns about the financial system in Iceland, and its likely impact on West Ham United FC.
Even with the hyperreality of the Hammers as it then stood, their finances were frail, to put it politely.
###############################################################################
##########################################################################
###############################################
#################################################################
#############################################
This weakness becomes terminal in the event of externalised and/or systemic breakpoints.
And the Hammers have experienced two - the Carlos Tevez/Sheffield United adjudication and the onset of the Depression.
Lets take these two terminal impacts in order, for it is our contention that West Ham United are very likely to be the first Premiership team to go bankrupt.
After Alan Curbishley had left Upton Park, allegedly due to transfer interference but also due to the whispers about the Tevez case, the bottom fell out of Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson's world.
Lord Griffiths found West Ham guilty in the 'When Is A 3rd Party Agreement Not A 3rd Party Agreement?' case.
The initial projections were that Sheffield United might be able to claim £30 million off the east Londoners.
Within days, this situation had worsened with news that up to 10 Sheffield United players were considering taking out individual cases against West Ham.
Hilariously, after West Ham realised that their cause could not be referred to the Court for Arbitration in Sport without Sheffield's agreement (that will teach them to depend on Man Utd's Maurice Watkins for legal advice - they might as well have asked the club cat), a Hammers spokesperson stated: "If Sheffield United want to do the honourable thing, they would join us in allowing the CAS to consider the case."
West Ham? Honour? You're having a laugh...
As the Griffiths report stated: "We consider that West Ham's conduct immediately after the commission decision of 27 April 2007, and its non-disclosure of such conduct to the Premier League amounted to further breaches of the obligation under Rule B13, to behave with the utmost good faith towards the Premier League."
######################################################################
#######################################################################
##############################################
West Ham repeatedly broke league rules resulting in relegation, financial losses and career-based negativities for those associated with the Yorkshire club.
A key factor is that Scudamore allowed these illegalities on his watch, and, #############################################################################
######################################################################
##################################################################
At the very least, the man aided and abetted the breaking of his own organisation's rules to the massive benefit of one of its member clubs, and the equivalent disadvantage of one its other members.
############################################################################
#####################################################################
Scudamore would be better off retiring now, while there are still some small fragments of status left.
Scudamore brings three momenta to the Premier League.
His background in economics and his belief in a free market ideology are outdated.
The unfettered capitalism that Scudamore champions is simply not going to continue.
His links to the betting industry via both Peter Scudamore, the former jockey, and ################################################################################
#############################################################
##############################################
His training as a referee has helped in his ##################################
############################################################################
################################################################
Scudamore has nothing to offer for the strategy of reintroducing integrity into the sport of football.
As Brian Granville said, after questioning whether Scudamore was a fit-and-proper-person: "Under the present fatuously lax rules of the league, one can only assume that had Hitler or Mae Tse Tung decided to take over an English football club, the fact that neither of them had a criminal conviction would have meant that they would have been nodded through as owners."
The Telegraph's Patrick Barclay made a similar point regarding the fact that Shinawatra can takeover a club in ScudamoreWorld, but Nelson Mandela could not.
The Guardian, as usual, had nothing to say on the matter - still sitting in toilet cubicles sniggering about swearwords, I guess...
For a club in financial crisis at an ownership level, the Griffiths report was a bombshell, an expected bombshell, but a bombshell nonetheless.
Iceland being declared bankrupt was a bombshell, but equally expected.
Gudmundsson, having lost his job as Landsbanki chairman following nationalisation, will, of course, be able to spend more time his wife discussing her nazi past.
For it is unlikely that affairs at West Ham United are going to be under his declining sphere of influence for very much longer.
West Ham are trying to put a brave face on their termination as a footballing entity.
Asgeir Fridgeirsson, the vice-chairman at the Hammers, is trying to look ahead, saying that the club will have to sell more players before any money can be reinvested in the club.
The Fridge denies that West Ham is for sale but lies that "there is enormous interest in the club."
Yeah right...
Unfortunately, this nonsense appeared concurrently with the observation by Keith Harris of Seymour Pierce, representing the interests of Mike Ashley in the sale of Newcastle, that the credit crisis will effect any likely sale of Newcastle.
He made this statement after the illusory consortia from various exotic locations all managed to miss the deadline for making a bid for the north east club.
And Newcastle are a bigger outfit than West Ham...
An owner without cash or status.
Debts that are not serviceable.
Potentially up to £50 million costs relating to the Tevez illegalities.
No buyers on the horizon.
The banks tightening the credit squeeze.
It will prove a suitable legacy to the ScudamoreWorld era that West Ham United go bust while Newcastle United exist in a state of suspended animation, and, indeed, suspended disbelief!
But these are not the only outfits that are threatened by the financial crisis.
We fully listed the risks to the Premiership earlier in the season but, since then, the situation has markedly deteriorated at several clubs.
#########################################, which is not great for Liverpool.
AIG are not going to be renewing their Man Utd deal, even if they complete the current one.
Sponsors are also disappearing across the remainder of the Premiership.
West Ham no longer have XL, choosing to have the numbers on both the front and the back of the shirts. This just adds to the hyperreality of items at an auction...
Sponsors cannot even be found at West Brom despite their return to the Premiership, while Wigan, Hull and several others may soon have to make the choice between a blank shirt and an auction number.
The Russian stockmarket is taking a huge buffetting in this crisis. A combination of cowboy territory regulation (or lack of it) and malicious geopolitical speculation has resulted in trading being suspended on the majority of recent days.
If Abramovich were to call in his £700 million, Chelsea have 18 months to pay up.
Gaydamak Snr is looking to sell the club that the Illusion claim is owned by Gaydamak Jnr for a knockdown price - daddy needs the money fast and he knows that a sale is well nigh impossible in the current climate of financial fear.
Everton are desperately seeking a buyer in order to compete with Liverpool, although competition on the pitch might be better achieved by outbidding ############### #######################################################
Arsenal are still in limbo.
#####################################################################
###################################################################
#################################################################
Man Utd need profits to service their debts, but merchandise sales will disappear as quickly as has the waiting list for season tickets.
Man City have hyper-hyperowners. But the price of oil is 55% off its summer high and even hyper-hyperowners have to consider their portfolios of investments.
There is some beauty in the circularity of the Iceland/West Ham affair.
A dodgy Icelander moved into Leningrad to make his money out of biscuits and booze, with absolutely no help whatsoever from the Russian mafia who control these sectors.
The money raised was used to set up his bank in Iceland and to fund the purchase of West Ham.
The dodgy Icelander continued to use his brand of cowboy capitalism in the Premier League with the substantial support of Richard Scudamore.
His illegalities exposed, his bank nationalised and, who rides to the rescue? The Russian Deep State, otherwise known as the Russian underworld.
Still, Richard Scudamore clings on.
He briefly crawled out of his gutter to utter some useless platitudes in the light of the current crisis, but swiftly slid back underground when he saw how the ground lay.
Lord Triesman at the FA has put clear daylight between his view of English football and the theme-parked nonsense provided by ScudamoreWorld.
Referring to debt, Triesman says: "I believe this poses a terrible danger. Not only is debt at high risk levels, it is in a period when transparency lies in an unmarked grave."
Ah, that would be ScudamoreWorld then.
Referring to inappropriate owners, Triesman is concerned at "the lack of scrutiny and transparency."
ScudamoreWorld again.
Referring to the fit-and-proper-person's test (FPPT), Triesman thinks it is "ineffective" and "doesn't do the job sufficiently robustly."
Scudamore designed the loopholes personally.
Referring to West Ham and Tevez, Triesman questioned the right of the Hammers to appeal.
Scudamore, it was, we are told, who ##########################################
##########################################################################
###################################################################
In Scudamore's brief visit above ground, he rejected the arguments of his counterpart at the FA.
In ScudamoreWorld, the debt is "sustainable" apparently.
"I don't agree that debt is bad."
Strange one this.
In no other part of the global financial system is debt now regarded as sustainable, yet Scudamore thinks it is in English football.
He isn't dealing with criminal money is he?
For that is the only cash still sloshing around...
In desperation, Scudamore asked us all a question: "Is there a financial danger to any club?"
Dereliction of duty, pal.
Resign.
Now.
Just go away and fiddle horseracing with all your psycho-friends in Newmarket.
We don't want you or your sort in the new Triesman/Burnham blueprint for the proper football in England.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
