Daily Flog II: Hedge funds to the rescue; kitten-burgers in Peru

In the midst of the global financial crisis caused by Wall Street speculators, don’t sell Wall Street short.

Let the hedge funds do it for you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to the speculators who have raked billions in profits from Wall Street in just the past decade. Now that the SEC’s three-week ban on short-selling is ending, hedge-fund managers can start gambling again on the planet’s future.

No matter how it goes, they’ll make out big-time. That’s what hedge-fund managers do — they hedge their bets.

This is a good thing. Just listen to Peter Sorrentino, a money manager at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati, which oversees $16.5 billion. Bloomberg quotes him in “Hedge Funds May Cut Volatility as Short-Sale Ban Ends”:

“Lifting the short ban restores the balance in the marketplace. It should bring liquidity back into the market, which will cap some of the volatility we’ve seen lately.”

Your $700 billion bailout didn’t work, so now the hedge-fund managers will step in with their cash to try to right things. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around?

At least you’re not in Zimbabwe, where the inflation rate has now soared to 231,000,000 percent.

Take a brief break from worrying about your financial future and worry about kittens and other things…

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Guardian (U.K.): ‘Pass the cat burgers: Desperate to read a story that’s not about the economy? Welcome to the outrage caused by Peru’s cat-eating festival.’

McClatchy: ‘Supreme Court shows little sympathy for whales beset by sonar’

L.A. Times: ‘Iraq play is a tragicomedy’

N.Y. Daily News: ‘Sex addiction on the rise, from pop culture to Wall Street’

N.Y. Post: ‘TIN PAN ALLEY’S SAD TUNE’

Guardian (U.K.): ‘Historian says Beatles were just capitalists, and not youth heroes’

Times (U.K.): ‘Picasso is too low-brow for the Louvre’

L.A. Times: ‘Surfers’ spirits sink as artificial reef near LAX is dismantled’

N.Y. Times: ‘NKorea May Be Developing Small Nuclear Warhead’

IRIN: ‘Efforts to fight “black cloud” in Cairo’

BBC: ‘Islamabad police complex attacked’

BBC: ‘Firefox users gain location tool’

Washington Post: ‘Man Finds Wrong House, Wrong Bed, Nice Family’

N.Y. Daily News: ‘Former Hawaiian Tropic Zone creep accused in attacks on four women’