Gah!

Piccie from here.

I had the great pleasure of spending today, the whole day, in a large fluro-lit room that could easily have been mistaken for a common room in a prison, say, if only the wooden skirting boards hadn't been quite so decorative.

While not literally a prison, it was prison-like nonetheless.

And what oppressive force caused this day-long sentence? That's right! A professional development day! While I'm still at a loss to explain the words 'professional' and 'development' in that phrase, I can confirm that it took all day.

In the sea of 'blah blah' that washed over me today, here are three things that I learnt:

1. If you're in agribusiness and have trees maturing in 18 years time you might want to have a think about climate change, or at least pretend you have when someone asks you a question about it;

2. An insurance salesperson with a broken foot is not ironic, it's karma; and

3. The funniest sentence uttered by anyone anywhere in the world about the whole global financial crisis chestnut is this: "Asset prices may fluctuate with, you know, your market forces."

Yep, they'll do that. Gotta watch your market forces. Won't someone lock me up and spare me anymore learning?

Snap!

It might not look like a joy-joy-happy-happy news day (the market's dropped a gazillion points, another foot has washed up off Canada, and the NSW State Government continues to bury us under, well, mystifying political crapola) but I hope you join me in celebrating this photo.

Oh happy day! Oh miraculous online media outlet! It's a brand new despairing broker shot! I've not seen this chappy before, and can I say, broker chappy, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance. Perhaps we will see you tomorrow again. We've met many of your colleagues several times each: sometimes they're standing in front of the big boards of red numbers, sometimes they're rubbing their eyes (or fixing a contact lens, as one dear reader suggested), and sometimes, like you, they're checking their temples for a pulse.

Here's to a week of negative returns so we can get to know you a little better. Welcome aboard!

Broker, broker on the wall...

Over the weeks and months (years?) of the financial crisis I've been watching with great delight the daily line-up of brokers and other financial deviants who have been paraded before us in the newspapers and online.

Sometimes known financial schmuckheads, mostly anonymous broker underlings, but always with despairing--and shocked--faces, at finding themselves in front of kilometres of electonric boards filled with red, red numbers. These images have greeted us every unimaginative news day.

Find the latest gazillion of these images here.

It's always been hard to find images for the business and finance news: they mostly range from the banal dollar-sign-on-a-bag-of-money to the more connotative salt-and-pepper-haired-retirees-wearing-loafers-and-jumpers-tied-around-their-shoulders-grinning-denturishly-as-they-sail-around-on-their-big-fancy-yachts images (which is also file footage for incontinence ads).

Because it would be completely naff and totally unimaginative of the world's press to resort to a thousand versions of the one image to represent the financial crisis, I've decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and suggest other reasons why all these financial-type people have been snapped with their heads in their hands.

1. All work causes allergic reactions (thus the eye rubbing, etc), it's just that all the world's photographers happened to be in the foyers of all the world's major stock markets' headquarters because Warrren Buffett said something about something.

2. They can't believe the botox didn't work. Just HOW are they going to iron out those wrinkles?

3. People who work in the finance industry are actually very sensitive people who care deeply about those they're screwing, I mean their clients. They cry through empathy at the drop of a hat (or a Hang Seng).

4. They've all, simultaneously and collectively, got something in their eye.

5. They're trying to stifle a yawn because they've just opened the paper to the ten billionth image of a broker with their head in their hands. "Oh look, here's one with me rubbing my eyes, and another with me with my hand on my forehead, and another with me..."

I like the Ben Bernanke picture the best: I think he's crying because he doesn't want to play anymore.

* Thanks to The Post Family for the link.