It should come as absolutely no surprise to anybody that the Alternative Investment Management Association, which represents those financial sector cowboys otherwise known as Hedge Funds, doesn’t like the FSA’s new rules which will force them to disclose significant short-selling positions. Hedge Funds tend to make a lot of money from betting that a company’s share price will fall, and the FSA thinks this is having an adverse affect on companies which need to offer rights issues to raise cash (something lots of banks are currently doing to survive the credit crunch.
The FSA claims these new rules are designed to combat market abuse – a handy catch all term, because in today’s ‘anything goes’ financial markets, it’s practically impossible to tell what counts as a fair and honourable transaction and what counts as sneaky, underhand market abuse.
Either way, once again the City of London earns it’s well deserved reputation as a snivelling hypocrite which insists that the government should leave it alone to get along with its business, except when things go tits-up and a hefty bailout at the taxpayers expense is required.
