sutton038

I've just signed up for a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/#!/Suitpossum I'll mostly use it to write haikus. I'll also flag up interesting pieces related to social & environmental finance innovation, financial activism, alternative financial systems, and international development. MY FIRST TWITTER FOLLOWER Please do follow @Suitpossum if you're into the Twitter lifestyle.

There’s a troubling question in my mind whenever I’m in Berkeley Square: It’s the mystery of why I can’t find any good coffee here. It’s mysterious precisely because this square is the centre of the world’s largest concentration of hedge funds , and that kind of means the average person walking here commands a salary larger than…well, everyone else in the whole world. So where’s the good coffee? BERKELEY SQUARE, MAYFAIR Have you ever wondered what a hedge fund is? I mean, I can tell you that a hedge fund is a company registered in the Cayman Islands, and that people around the world put money into it, and then it uses that money as collateral to borrow a bunch more money, and uses that to bet on various things like company shares, commodities, bonds, and derivatives… But does that really tell you what a hedge fund is? To know what a hedge fund is, you should try run your hand over the golden plaques on the doors around Berkeley Square. The names seem un...

Last week I took a London-based NGO to the London Metal Exchange. We’re kind of concerned about some issues around commodity speculation , so thought it would be worth a visit. To be fair, I sometimes go with my friend Harry just for fun, because it’s such a darn unique curiosity. If you ever want to do it, go to the LME website, fill in the booking form and send it to them. Why would you want to go there? Because it’s the largest global exchange in industrial metals, and that makes it an interesting node in the matrix of global trade. It mostly deals with metal derivatives (futures and options contracts for future delivery of metal), but trade in physical metals for immediate delivery also occurs. I spoke to a trader outside when he was having a smoke, and he said that if you deal in the physical ‘spot’ contracts, you’ll have metal waiting for you in a warehouse within two days. The real choice is what metal you want...

It’s with sadness that I discover the Really Free School has shut down . It was one of the most original responses to education cuts, a band of misfits occupying buildings to host voluntary lecture programmes, taking a grand piano with them wherever they went . Back in February I joined forces with Corporate Watch , in presenting a primer on the financial crisis at the school. It took place in an old mansion in Bloomsbury Square, in an upper-floor room with a projector. I had a double-sided A5 page of notes. On the one side was written ‘Credit; Ownership; Currency; Commodities; Derivatives’. On the other side was written “Commercial banks, investment banks, interdealer brokers; Institutional investors, hedge funds, private equity”. I started by holding it up and saying, “On this side is all the stuff the financial sector deals with, and on this other side, is all the people that deal with it.” That’s not entirely accurate, but I’m a believer in establi...

On Thursday the Guardian reported on a High Court ruling , holding that the Metropolitan Police were unlawful in ‘kettling’ protesters during the G-20 demonstrations in April 2009. Two years ago, I took this photo. It was some three hours after the police line came like a running of the riot bulls down Bishopsgate, randomly trampling flower-children in a startling display of the arbitrary powers of the state. The bulldozing was sanctioned for some official reason not quite understood by anyone present, especially considering they’d chosen to target the hippies rather than the anarchists, but apparently it was necessary, for some reason, unknown to anyone present. Note the Financial Times in the foreground. There was an article in it by Martin Wolf entitled ‘ The urgency of now: Why tomorrow’s G-20 summit will fail to deal with the big challenges .” It made for interesting reading while the police deployed their state-of-the-art kettling strategy. This...

In 2008 I embarked on an unusual experiment in gonzo urban anthropology. I left the world of radical left-wing academia, and went to London with two goals in mind. Goal one: To break into the financial sector at the heart of one of the most powerful centres of the global economy and to see first-hand how it worked, to learn by doing, not by reading. Goal two: To shatter the complacent intellectual comfort zone I’d found myself in, and to learn to move in and out of different worlds like a chameleon. It was an exercise in critical thought, backed by real action. ADVANCED TIE SKILLZ That’s how I found myself on the 36th floor of the Lehman Brothers offices in Canary Wharf, four weeks before the company collapsed, and how I found myself in the subsequent financial crisis, trying to pitch esoteric inflation derivatives, property derivatives, and longevity derivatives, aboard a mad raft with an oddball crew of old rogues and young rats, fighting against the odds to stay afloat. It’s a prett...