Beer-swilling blogger scoops major media outlets again

Well we’re clinking glasses all round here at Falling Downs today. The more erudite readers will already recognize the prescient nature of the insights generated by our unique brain trust.  We had Libyan missiles going through the Gaza tunnels months before major Israeli media picked up the story.

We miss the odd one too… turns out Gadaffi wasn’t really having a chess tournament with Shalit after all. But overall, this blog has a pretty interesting track record of getting on a story long before the professional journalism community even catches a wiff.

Why is it? Well, for starters we’re smarter. Secondly, we have better weed. Thirdly, we’re already unemployed so we don’t have to worry about losing our jobs if we give offence.

Back in October we brought you The Eurocrisis: guaranteeing massive profits for the bond vulture funds.  Almost three months later a major alternative news aggregator brings you this story:

There is mounting evidence that some of these investment funds are not even original lenders, but have bought Greek debt cheaply after the economic crisis had already hit precisely in order to be able to blackmail the country. Elsewhere in the world Jubilee Debt Campaign has called these companies ‘vultures’ – funds which buy up the debts of a crisis-hit country for small amounts of money, in order to be able to make large profits.
German daily Der Spiegel estimates that ‘speculative investors’ could account for an enormous €50 billion of Greek debt. Bloomberg reported that a fund called Saba Capital Management bought Greek debt at a price suggesting a 75% chance of default. Reuters reports the likelihood that funds have been “building up their positions in the past months” buying debt for 40% face value, and that the “bet had already worked for some funds” as Greece has paid out on smaller debts to get rid of the claims.

Who knew those journalists at Der Spiegel read The View from Falling Downs. Now if we could just convince them and their huge budgets to follow up on some of our other stories. 

Was Jimmy Hoffa’s last ride really in a salami delivery truck?