More on Hollywood....

Reality check is in order.  Where are we?  And where would we like to be?  The idea of a brokerage firm selling hollywood movie futures is so spectacularly interesting at this moment.  Why invest in real companies?  Why not bet upon a bit of reality shifting material?  If one can buy a CDS on the US Government, why not Hollywood?  Hollywood seems much more credible at the moment.  And real.  And necessary.  With the coming Gloom and Doom, why, we need entertainment more than anything.  

Because it is not right.  We need to untangle any industry from the financial sector as clearly as it can be done.  There is no point in rendering everything disfunctional (and prone to fraud?) by attaching it to the great entangled financial universe in such a way that is being proposed by the Hollywood futures idea.  I am certain that in its time it seemed a jolly idea -- in fact, it was modeled on a folly.  The Hollywood Stock Exchange already exists and has been trading in virtual dollars for years.  A good honest bit of fun, rather than the parasite it would become if it were dealing in real money.  But gosh...if it could become an honest folly and devote a portion of profits to charity - like healthcare for the screen writers guild or something?  Missmarketcrash might like the idea again...

And way off topic - did you know there was an earthquake in Sweden today?

Hollywood Futures...

Missmarketcrash had a flash of inspiration this weekend to go shopping at Canary Wharf.  Canary Wharf is aptly named these days - it is indeed full of canaries and somewhat like a coal mine. There is a great vast mall buried beneath the towering offices currently home to most of the financial companies in London.  One enters said mall by whizzing around an underground roundabout that really does look like the Saddest-Place-On-Earth featuring little tunnels that spoke off of it.  It is pretty unclear where all these little paths lead, and most do appear to lead to nowhere.  After taking a full spin around and surveying the non-options, I entered the one that seemed to lead to a parking garage.  Where I was greeted by a security guard.  The security guard grinned and took one of those little bomb sniffing handheld devices out and ran it over my steering wheel and car door handles before waving me on.  A small flashback to my Sept. 11th moments in NYC drifted by and then hung overhead.  With my two small boys in tow I entered the mall which was a confusing array of paths leading nowhere just like the roundabout.  But Joy.  Canary Wharf was doing all kinds of nice activities for the children to draw in the shoppers and had some great things on offer.  We started by decorating some eco-shopper cloth bags with paint and lovely sparkly things.  Whilst we were doing this, two nice security men with a bomb sniffing dog circled around us so the boys could pet the dog.   The cloud overhead started to throb.  We dutifully carried on and did some shopping.  I quelled the claustrophobic underground thing enough to have a pretty jolly time with all the elves who ran up to the boys and passed out sweets and biscuits and kind banter.  Almost fun.

When we returned home (alive thank goodness), our neighbor who had just fired 80 people and works at Canary Wharf was standing outside.  He hopped on top of my inky cloud and I carried him (metaphorically - he is enormous) inside with my shopping.  I shoved the days experience into a dark corner where it mulled around a bit like a failed hollywood movie.  And then I opened the FT.  "All eyes on Hollywood futures" was the headline under a picture of some shocked looking cartoon animals.  I felt faint and blinked.  But the headline remained and the cartoon animals stared back at me.  Film Derivatives???

Can I write the movie about it first?