Machoolahan's "Algorithmic Trading Thread"

Thanks for the interesting responses, guys. I am not sure we are actually disagreeing about anything: I was focussing on the micro event of Saddam's demise and you are looking at the bigger picture.

Without wishing to cause offence, I think you are being rather naive, mac, in thinking that the world has ever worked in any other way than "might is right"; it's just that you are more familiar with the modern examples. I do share your disgust with the spin and downright lies fed to the masses by those who govern us, and your sense of powerlesness to do anything about it. However, times have changed from, say, the radical sixties. Our politicians have become increasingly powerless in the face of the rapid integration of the modern world - for example, much of what affects us is decided in Brussels or by the shifting of global economic forces completely beyond our Government's power to influence. This, combined with an ever-increasing convergence between the policies of the main political parties and the abject quality of those elected to govern us, has turned the vast majority of our citizens off politics altogether. So long as relative prosperity is maintained - and Gordon Brown has only achieved that by destroying our pension system, creating millions of public sector non-jobs for which the rest of us have to pay and over-taxing us to the point where the competitiveness of our businesses and economy has become seriously impaired - the masses will shrug their shoulders and turn away to the latest episode of Big Brother.

Athough the state of this Country is, indeed, lamentable, I think we are still very far from the conditions which prevailed in Nazi Germany. Essentially, we remain tolerant, decent and fair, although I share your creeping unease that we are at the top of a very slippery slope indeed when places such as Guantanamo Bay are permitted to operate with the tacit support of our Government. What is encouraging, perhaps, is that the penny seems to have dropped at last with the US electorate and Bush Jnr now has one of the lowest approval ratings of all time.

Nil desperandum, chaps, and a happy new year to you all.

Rey.