07/09/2007 – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

“Among the first thing one notices, when looking at the contract price arrays, is that the distant months seem to trade at the same price as the nearby, at least in the same crop year”

One of the things that shocked me about the primitive exchange I came across in Binéfar four years ago was that, 300 years after the Japanese started using forward contracts for rice and 150 years after the spread of rail communications through the American West laid the basis for futures trading on the Chicago exchange,…

Spanish Pavarotti anecdote

Tutto Pavarotti was the title of the great man’s best-selling album, but even this proved a linguistic step too far for Spanish audiences. At concerts on the tour he was alarmed to see them rise en masse and chant “Tutto! Tutto!” in the belief that this was his first name.