mr ed:
here is an entry i made at wotisitgood4.blogspot.com on Mon Nov 10:
"i turned to fox to get their spin on the latest riyadh bombings - and there was nothing on... instead they showed a story about a hepA outbreak at some chain called Cheechies or some such - but all the footage was of mcdonalds... which wasnt even mentioned in the story. perhaps theres a stock-trading strategy based on who is being pilloried on FauxNews"

this observation perhaps takes on heavier significance given the madcowscare. i dont know what it means. there has only been one cow found so far. if this happens to be a part of another falsified story, then it seems directed at something larger than mcd's - 12 countries immediately banned beef imports. the only possible reasons i can think for this is either trying to extend the isolationism ('unilateral'), or an attempt to rush in some GM 'solution'. one mite also posit that there is also a link to the major human diseases de jour - flu & sars - i hope we dont see the media merging the stories... ive previously suggested that we should get scared when we hear the term 'forced quarantine' - but i meant that in a human sense...

i dont know what trading strategy might work. the original mcd story seemed to be a direct attack on them, which presumably would have helped their competitors - but if my hypothesis is accurate, then they have decimated not only mcd's but also the entire fastfood industry, and im tempted to think that all meat industries will get hurt - at least in the short term. some people will switch to lamb/pig/chicken instead of beef, but u run the risk that lamb/pig/chicken gets tarred with the bse brush - and there'll be substitution into more vegetables. praps the attack wasnt directed at mcd's, or at the food industry, but the entire economy. weve already seen attacks on other industries, and mite see some more... or praps the attack is just on the usd. it'd be interesting to check the relative wealth impact across countries (incl the US) of say another 80%fall in the $ - i wonder how much chinese and russian wealth is tied up. perhaps the neocons are trying to send other countries broke by colllapsing the value of their holdings. or by shattering their global competitive positions and trying to instigate peasant riots - like in venezuela, and georgia. if any of that hypothesis is valid, then the best trading strategy would be to continue to short the dollar. or maybe go long usd bonds. or praps us residential real estate - altho thats starting to get too many degrees away from the core issue - at least u dont have to worry about other market forces in currency & bonds - its purely political - independent of unemployment or mkt crashes or product-substitution questions et al. going long beef seems a bit risky.


another marginally/possibly curious item about the bse story is that 'the samples went to britain for verification.' i dont know anything about microbiology - but id have to reckon that the CDC has doctors who can identify bse. sure, it kinda sounds like the britain thing makes sense - cos britain had madcowdisease. but it rings tiny alarm bells 4 me - its the sort of detail you would make up if u were trying to make up a convincing story. like that stupid pilot that they made up at thanksgiving in baghdad. if the CDC doesnt have a strain of bse for early identification, and a bunch of doctors who can recognise it, then they really arent doing their job.
apparently the rumour about the bse was out b4 the public story broke. this either confirms that the case is legitimate, or that the propaganda machine has learnt that its more convincing to leak stuff through experts in advance.

drawing an even longer bow - all this talk about bse inevitably brings up in ones mind the uk, and microbiology, and the mind is tempted to wander toward all the microbiologists who got murdered this year - and our emiinent friend dr kelly who apparently thought that cutting furiously across his wrists in an open field was his best option for a successful suicide. thank goodness he wasnt under surveillance.

time mite tell if its madcow or madfox disease.