Help yourself, Paddy, hinder those wiseguys
As Irish bank stocks tumble and bets are made on a further fall, Declan Lynch senses the hackles rising
THE news that seven international hedge funds have bet about $280m that Irish bank stocks will continue to fall is the sort of thing that would get your dander up. And there's not much that would get your dander up these days.
Dander, like most other things, is down.
You may recall that the regulator recently banned this thing called short-selling -- but while investors are banned from taking new positions, existing positions can be maintained, reduced, or closed.
These ones are being maintained.
So these seven punters between them have wagered $280m that Irish bank shares, which are already at record lows, are set to go down further. Down, down, deeper and down, as Status Quo so rightly put it.
And what are we going to do about it?
Well, we could stand there flaccidly admiring it, regarding it as perhaps the purest form of punting known to man, with its total lack of consideration for anything on this earth except backing a winner, at the best odds, with the most money.
These guys are not sentimental. If they thought they could make money by betting on the number of people who will be living in tents by Christmas, they would not hesitate -- though, as they sip a chilled wine, they might savour the imagery of the tent, for so long a symbol of corporate entertainment, now becoming the primary dwelling for so many Americans.
And for Paddy? Well, if these guys think about Paddy at all, as they bet their millions on his banks going down the toilet, they might think something like this: Paddy rode the wave . . . he rode that wave hard . . . and now . . . well, now it is time for him to lie down and be beaten like the dog that he is.
And they might be right, because they usually are, which is why they can draw down $280m to be having a flutter on the the result of the Demolition Derby, Irish-style. But they might be wrong, too. Because Paddy with his dander up can be a formidable foe.
There he was, maybe thinking that there's not much left for him in this world, except sitting in a bar watching midweek Carling Cup action on the big screen, waiting for his email to be read out on You're On Sky Sports. But then he hears about shadowy figures in New York and London betting their brains out, aiming to make a fortune out of poor Paddy's misfortune, and something inside of him stirs. It's a thing he hasn't felt stirring for a long time, as he watched his world going awry.
It's his dander.
And if you could measure it on a graph, when that news about the hedge funds came through, you would see it heading in one direction, and in one direction only. It was shooting through the roof.
Because in so many ways he feels powerless these days, overwhelmed by forces beyond his comprehension. Yet in this case, perhaps uniquely, Paddy can actually do something which might help himself. And more, much more than this, in helping himself he can hinder those wiseguys in New York and London.
Yes, he can buy a few bank shares. Yes, he can.
Though ideally Brian Lenihan would just give him the money, to do his patriotic duty -- and wasn't there a fairly smart-looking guy on the news recently saying that when we look back at this time, we'll think we were mad that we didn't "fill our shoes" with them?
But more, much more than this, when he buys his few shares, Paddy will have the inexpressible pleasure of doing down the international players, with their diabolical portfolios and their black-hearted schemes.
And he can bring a new energy to the market by echoing Patrick Kavanagh himself who, when asked why he was always so critical of a fellow poet, thought about it for a while and eventually replied: for spite.
