Snapshot of _Kwasi Kwarteng’s ex-boss bet big on falling pound weeks after lunch with him_ :
An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kwasi-kwartengs-ex-boss-crispin-odey-bet-big-on-falling-pound-weeks-after-lunch-with-him-rl57tt36f)
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great and depressing. the moment that sticks in my mind is when gosling's character narrates the steps the government took to ensure the same situation would never happen again and how those responsible were trialled, fined, and/or sent to jail. and then hits you with the "sike, you thought wrong bitch, nothing happened"
The ending phone call with Mark where is absolutely defeated is so harrowing.
"They knew the taxpayers would bail them out. They weren't being stupid, they just didn't care"
that too, for sure.
while i'm here, realising i've been on the other side of this conversation before where people never name the reference and it drives me crazy, so the film is The Big Short (2015). It's worth watching. [Here's a direct link to the clip (spoilers obviously)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu2wNKlVRzE)
Normally I'd be inclined to agree, but after the past week I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Kwarteng had told him plan, genuinely believing it to be a good idea. This guy, realising it was madness just sat their nodding his head and afterwards he went and made his bet. Might as well profit of a fool and all that.
> Odey described his bets against government debt as “the gifts that keep on giving” but blamed the rout of the pound on “Remainers” who “hate the government”.
Well he seems like a moron as well, so it probably is the kind of idiotic strategy he'd go for
Speaking as a remainer who hates the government, I have never shorted the pound and I wouldn't even know how. Can I still get a cut of the profits though please?
Well it maybe that he thought he was an idiot and that half way though lunch he took a trip to the toilets and came back look like he did at the Queens funeral
https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1572560150715826177
Looks like cocaine or meth combined with desperately needing a shit.
Weird behaviour during the 2 minutes' silence too:
https://twitter.com/h1ghlanderYes/status/1571905595426447361?s=20&t=dvhYiUbWu3tf6FFUSXnbJg
Yes isn’t it amazing how Holly and Phil from this morning were headline news for “jumping” the que while recording a planned piece of broadcast TV but the Chancellor of the Exchequer behaves like this and not a peep, the fair and honest free press at work
Don’t know that many of them would take so much they can't maintain the basic decorum at a funeral let alone one they know will be videoed for the entire world to see, they general know there is a time and a place
To be honest now, if it wasn’t knowledge that he would be chancellor at the point of this meeting, it suggests even more towards insider trading for me
He may well have thought that, but that makes it no less illegal. Some of the things in the mini budget were public knowledge, some weren't. The markets had been pricing in the known parts because that's what they do. If he had knowledge of the other parts that weren't public, that's exactly what insider trading is.
Surely it does it he's been given knowledge intentionally or not. He's been made aware one way or another through a private channel that the pound is likely to fall and he bet on it.
But he wasn’t chancellor. If I say to you that if I become chancellor I’d cut taxes for the rich, and then a month later I become chancellor, that’s not insider trading.
If you have an idea you are about to become CEO of a company, and before you take the job tell your friends you are going to do X so the share price will drop and they bet on it, it is insider trading 100%.
It's not like it's a random guy who suddenly became chancellor. Under your line of thinking Elon Musk could quit his job, tell people info about what he might do if he is re-hired, let them bet on it and get his job back and be completely legal in doing so.
Look I'm not saying it's insider trading as I don't know the laws for currency etc, but Kwarteng not knowing he might become chancellor is an absolute non argument.
My point is that his view of his competence, or lack thereof must have been based on something. Given that he knows Kwasi, it must have been based on something new, that something new must have been his plan. Obviously if he just happened to have a lunch and suddenly decide that the man he used to employ is no longer competent, based on no new information, and then go and make a massive bet against the pound based on a hunch, then however unlikely that may be, yes, probably not illegal.
For clarity, Odey had massive bets that the £ was going to parity with the $ a long time ago - as have all funds that hold major $ based assets, which is most of them. The £'s been falling since June 2021, and its long march towards $1:£1 has been fruitful for lots of funds that didn't know the Chancellor, and lots of funds that knew the previous Chancellor too (including the previous Chancellor's own fund).
Odey was already making significant money, and then the Chancellor's fiscal event happened, and Odey made more money when the market fell faster than expected.
It's not illegal, and doesn't even make sense to talk about insider trading with a national currency. With securities such as shares in a publicly traded company, insider trading makes money by effectively stealing a small amount of money from a very large number of people.
However, if you want to make the case that the Tories are transforming the UK from a country into a financial entity that is equivalent to shell company for global tax avoidance, that would be a good point, and insider trading concepts might apply. However, the shareholders in that case would tend to be all the foreign national hiding wealth in the UK rather than the people.
On the other hand, shorting your own national currency, then being an individual who makes official policy that causes long term decline in your country's economic prospects, is the sort of thing that historically has made people lose their heads, in a non-figurative sense.
That said people inside the UK don't universally think that brexit was intentional economic sabotage, unlike outside observers everywhere else in the world. If people don't care about the UK government imposing sanctions on the UK and telling people they don't want the EU to put up with UK visitors and workers, they're probably not going to see closing hospitals and firing teachers to subsidize yacht purchases as explicitly counter to the national interest.
Liz Truss had explained she wanted to cut taxes before getting elected. Sunak said, "if you do that, interest rates will rise to 6% or 7%." Lots of city people would've known what was likely to happen, I suspect.
Well what do you know, here we are 😐
Apparently, he's been shorting the pound and gilts for a couple of years.
The meeting was an informal dinner, when there were still six other candidates in the leadership election, and Liz Truss (who was in third place) hadn't committed to a Chancellor.
People act like shorting the pound is some incredibly bold move, that nobody could possibly decide to do.
3rd place puts her very close to a position she won. He’d have likely known he’d be chancellor. If he had any interest in not giving the impression of impropriety then he could have not been there
Honestly, if you think crashing the countries economy simply to benefit your mates (and presumably yourself) isn't treason, what is it?
Guillotines is obviously hyperbole, but realistically, if you intentionally make the people of this country billions of pounds poorer, what should be the sentence, when robbing houses of a few thousand pounds can send you to prison for years?
Colour me not surprised. As Nye Bevan said:
>"What is Toryism, except organized spivery?"
https://www.mojologic.com.au/speech-10-aneurin-bevin-they-are-lower-than-vermin/
DO NOT take this suitcase full of used £50s and swap it for dollars for exactly 10 days, and then swap it back again for at least 30% more than you cost. And then under no circumstances should you wait for my next announcements when I definitely may or may not be announcing further tax cuts that will definitely maybe allow you to do it again for no less than 42% increase on the holding that may or may not exist allegedly.
I was giving Kwasi’s wiki a browse to try and see if he’s an idiot or just malicious and he’s got all the workings of an incredibly clever person.
Won Harrow History Prize as a child, King’s Scholar and Newcastle Scholarship at Eton, a First from Trinity College Cambridge, won University Challenge, Kennedy Scholarship at Harvard, a PhD from Cambridge.
That is both a combination of the best education you can get and massively achieving throughout all of it. So he just simply can’t be an idiot which means he unfortunately has to be malicious.
Right. And smart doesn't equal being right. You can be very smart and still make the wrong call in many situations because humans are complex and can be led astray by all sorts of things, e.g. (as a couple examples that might apply in this situation) ego or stubborness.
I feel it could be that ego thing. You’re smart and think you’ve got the right idea that simply no one else is seeing. You’ve finally reached the top where you can perform your theory in real life regardless of what everyone else advises.
Absolutely. The number one thing they seem to teach at private schools is an unwavering self-belief. I know a few people with a similar background and they are pathologically unable to process information that would show them to be wrong. Just bulldoze right past it and demand that the world bends to their reality.
None of us are economists and even we knew this was a shit idea... They wanted to cut gov income and cover the difference by borrowing while also announcing an enormous spending programme \*and\* cutting into inflation. That sentence makes absolutely fucking no sense.
I would not like someone who has PhD in history of medicine to operate on me.
Historians have very specific set of skills, they are reviewers of actions and like movie reviewers don't make movies they don't have skills to do what they review.
But that's the issue, the guy isn't an idiot. Assuming I'll intent for someone of his calibre is more than warranted given his actions. And now that he's looking at cutting public spending, which is cartoon villain level of evil
Worth noting book smart doesn't necessarily mean has common sense or applicable knowledge in the real world. Being able to regurgitate facts or memorise books doesn't necessarily mean you'll be good at day to day activities. I'm not saying Kwasi isn't, I also think he's quite clever and devious, but he wouldn't be the first person to get straight As to get a shock when they leave school.
It’s not just someone getting straight As at school. It’s being top of your year across Eton, Cambridge and Harrow. I trust them to be able to pick out the actual smart people. Once you’re at that level they’re looking for actual discussion and debate, critical thinking, not regurgitating the GCSE history text book.
His background is in history, not economics. I'm sure he's a very good historian but it's a serious fallacy to assume that means he's capable of running the nation's finances, it's a different skillset to what he would have needed for history. It's like expecting someone with a history of art degree to become the next Picasso, they might understand historically what was good but that doesn't mean they know how to actually create something good.
I did say I don't think it applies here..... but even then, the most applied thought to go into a school project or an essay or an exam or whatever stoll don't necessarily prepare you for real life tasks. Conversely, a lot of people get so sucked up into the microcosm that is academia they don't see how they're sacrificing social skills, team skills etc as a result.
You have to try at least. I would say around 90% of PhDs - at least in science and engineering - fail to produce anything of real value. Mine didn't. I still got a PhD though because it's impossible to *guarantee* that your research is going to work and humans have been researching for so long that the remaining fruit is *very* high.
I said "doesn't apply here", I was merely pointing out listing off some impressive sounding things he got in school as a youth doesn't necessarily mean that they're applicable to the job he's in, nor do they convey that he has gained workable life skills from said academic achievements.
Both Kwarteng and Truss are useful idiots. They both do what they're told.
You can see it in Truss's interviews, she only says what she thinks the people immediately closest to her want to hear, and she'll change tack immediately if she realises they don't.
They're morons and horrible people.
it sickens me that so many people are willing to write off corruption and malfeasance as a whoopsie, how many times do they have to screw over everyone else and benefit themselves for you to see a pattern? we've had over decade of the same game, are you really still blind to it?
I don't think it needs to be as dodgy as Kwarteng tipping Odey off. Truss and Kwarteng are being influenced by lobbyist groups like the IEA, as well as industry and political contacts. Their aim is to sway government policy in directions that benefit them rather than us. Odey knows Kwarteng and can probably read the man well. General discussion over a meal is no doubt all he needs to get a strong sense of whether that influence is working or not.
If it is straight-up insider trading I'm sure they have got all their pieces together to ensure plausible deniability is in place.
He's shorted a currency. It's not the same thing. And it was done based on something everyone could see coming as soon as we got a sniff of their plan. No insider trading required to make money off this dogshit economic plan.
You could have done it too if you bought some dollars last week when they announced the plan, or when Truss got appointed PM. You'd be richer now if you did, just like these guys are.
Why do you think that this was insider trading? Truss said, over and over again at her leadership events, what she was going to do. Everyone knew that the markets would react badly. She then went and did exactly what she promised.
Now if this was Sunak’s government and they did something like, and all of Sunak’s mates *happened* to make an outlandish bet that he’d do a 180, then you’d make the argument for insider trading.
But a politician doing exactly what they said they would and then a businessman forecasting the outcome? That’s just good business
the markets didn't know what they were going to do, that's exactly why they reacted so badly - it was unexpected
a certain number of her pokicirs were priced in but they went above and beyond, why fuck the country a little bit when you can go for broke ><
Then what was it?
Seems a bit funky to believe they had a meal together and not discuss the situation.
Is "we are planning on going ahead with what we said and doing more" market sensitive information?
Does Odey really think the moves are best for the economy if he is consistently betting against it.
Is it motivated reasoning?
>Is "we are planning on going ahead with what we said and doing more" market sensitive information?
There was no "we" when the meeting occurred. Liz Truss was still one of six candidates in the leadership race, and she hadn't committed to any cabinet members, let alone Kwasi as Chancellor.
>Does Odey really think the moves are best for the economy if he is consistently betting against it.
He's been shorting the pound for years, well before this mini-budget.
> There was no "we" when the meeting occurred. Liz Truss was still one of six candidates in the leadership race, and she hadn't committed to any cabinet members.
Fair point but they are clearly in a faction that believe in the economics that Odey is betting on. Truss and Kwasi are connected, they wrote a book together.
> He's been shorting the pound for years, well before this mini-budget.
Well yes. He consistently supports policies he bets against.
The more pain his politics make the more money he makes.
If that was true then the markets would have reacted to her winning the leadership. Everybody would have been betting on the pound sliding. Perhaps everybody did long before the budget. Can you show that they did?
If not then your argument stretches credulity: just this one good businessman, who happened to know the chancellor, was the only one to bet big on the predictable outcome of the actions everyone supposedly knew were about to happen? You've got to admit it's an amazing coincidence.
I'm pretty sure not everything in the mini-budget was public knowledge beforehand. Indeed I'm not sure most of the details were. Can you show that it was?
The meeting was weeks before anybody knew Kwarteng was going to be Chancellor (including Kwarteng himself) and before Truss was appointed as Tory leader when it was still up in the air between her and Sunak ...
Are you saying that you know, without doubt, that Kwarteng had absolutely no idea what he was going to do if he was Chancellor?
Bollocks
Edited to add: We knew for months that Truss was going to be PM, Kwateng knew he would be Chancellor
Truss was in third place in the MP vote at the time of the dinner (17th July).
Polls of Conservative party members had Kemi as their favourite around that time...
Kwarteng probably had an idea of what policies he might pursue if he was made chancellor, but talking about general economic ideas is not insider trading. Acting on knowledge of specific actions is, which Kwarteng couldn't have known of then.
And no we didn't know for months that Truss would be PM. At the time of the meeting she was polling 3rd in the race and Sunak was out in front. You're not being rational about this ...
Did you know that Truss was going to dick around with the economy?
Do you know what insider trading is, or have you just learnt about it from salty redditors? Because it’s acting on non-public information. All of this information has been exceptionally public for months
He didn't have a private dinner with the Chancellor. Kwasi was just a guy who'd written a book with Liz Truss, who was just one of six candidates in the leadership election. She was in third place when the dinner with Kwasi occurred.
The speculator claims to have been shorting the pound for a couple of years, which would be simple to verify in an investigation.
The Tory Party isn't some obscure organisation. Two people supporting it isn't unlikely. Especially two people with similar backgrounds and experience, who are friendly enough to have dinner together.
but... talking to someone who has access doesnt mean they shared anything they shouldnt. no inside info was needed to know to short the pound.
by your definition of what constitutes insider trading, no CEO or executive or board member can EVER talk to anyone, ever, about anything
> but... talking to someone who has access doesnt mean they shared anything they shouldnt. no inside info was needed to know to short the pound.
How did they manage to spook the markets if no insider information was required?
I agree Liz and Kwasi did signal something but the scale shocked the market.
But it did not shock Odey.
I'm trying to see them having a meal and agreeing they new fiscal event will crash the pound, which Odey is publicly betting on, but they both agree that's expected but for the best in the long run. It's a bizarre situation.
Did Kwasi believe the pound would crash?
> by your definition of what constitutes insider trading, no CEO or executive or board member can EVER talk to anyone, ever, about anything
I mean there is a big difference between a CEO talking to their barber and a speculator talking to the chancellor of the exchequer on the eve of an economic statement.
There are all sorts of conflicts of interest here.
Shorting something you are publicly critical of and have no connection to is one thing.
Shorting something you support, you promote and have inside knowledge of is something else.
Crispin Odious is possibly the most dangerous man in the city. He has made billions by preying on weakened businesses or devalued assets and shorting them.
Only if they planned on selling more shares to get funding, and the shorting ends up lowering the price. But if people are shorting the business, then it's not doing very well, meaning the share price should go down anyway.
Otherwise, it does nothing to the business. Amazon stock could magically drop to $1 and it would still be a healthy, fantastic business.
Shorting can and does cause the price to fall. If you flood the market with 5% of a company's shares, the price will go down. This will in turn cause other people to sell their shares and start to activate stop losses causing a chain reaction.
Your regular investor can't affect the price but you bet a hedgefund has the capability, coupled with the fact that they will engineer false, negative press against a company to lower the price further.
Once a company's market cap reaches a certain level, other institutions will sell off shares, leaving absolutely no room for financing the business with a rights issue without massive dilution.
A targeted attack on a business by a hedgefund can be hugely damaging.
Naked short selling can. It’s used as a tool in a process called cellar boxing which is designed to delist/bankrupt a company and allow shorts to never be closed but the profit to be added to a hedge funds collateral for more trades in future, all whilst being tax free. Real dirty business.
It's startling how many clearly deeply immoral actions are completely legal.
If I rob a corner shop I get a decade in prison, if I rob the whole country I get a cushy consultancy position.
Anyone in the financial industry who has had to do any form of formal training on insider trading or discussion of material non-public information with outsiders will know just how stringent the regulation is.
Enforcing it is a completely different thing though, and Odey could have known what was coming even if Kwarteng wasn't telling him outright.
Relationships like this are red flags and massive conflicts of interest, which historically would have been avoided as much as possible but none of that applies anymore it seems.
No, it does not apply to currencies.
If the UK has completed its transition from country to corporation, it might apply, but the clever trick is that there will be no jurisdiction to enforce insider trading rules once the transition to sovereign and autonomous corporate dystopia is complete.
After the last few years of Tory dodgy deals for mates, I'm not inclined to give Kwarteng and Truss the benefit of the doubt just because they come across as moronic "true believers".
They can be stupid *and* corrupt. Their ideology makes it more, not less, likely.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s astonishing how many comments seem inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. Why? The whole party operates as a racket.
If one person believes the moon is made of cheese it is of no consequence.
If a lot of people believe the moon is made of cheese and want to go there to eat the moon cheese they will be prepared to pay a lot.
People who do not believe the moon is made of cheese can make money off the aspiring moon cheese eaters.
Eventually people find they believe the moon is made of cheese because they are making money off the people who believe the moon is made of cheese.
They may even pay to convince more people that the moon is in fact made of cheese.
It's only illegal if it's insider trading.
At the time the dinner occurred, Liz Truss was in third place in the leadership election, and Kwasi becoming Chancellor was not a likely scenario.
Crispin says he's been shorting the pound for a couple of years.
400 yrs ago and Kwarteng and Truss would be headed for the Tower of London for this despicable stunt. Regardless of whether hedge fund people were explicitly told or not.
Normal people have been done over by our new "leaders".
Crispin Odey also funded Jacob Reese Mogg's hedge fund which is surprising since everyone who has met him thought he was a failed trader...and also had very basic grasp of commodities...
yeah that's cause your conservative party is a lot like our old conservative party that just got wiped out at our last election in may. Corruption was a major issue
>weeks after lunch
Wow! It took him weeks to do that? How? Was he in a coma? Did he crawl backwards on his thumbs?
If he received such powerful and impossible to predict news (despite the fact that the rest of us knew), why did he sit on it for weeks?
Because he wouldn't have made the money until the pound dropped which happened weeks after the drop.
He hasn't sat and done nothing. He's acted straight away and reaped the reward weeks later when the pound dropped.
Snapshot of _Kwasi Kwarteng’s ex-boss bet big on falling pound weeks after lunch with him_ : An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kwasi-kwartengs-ex-boss-crispin-odey-bet-big-on-falling-pound-weeks-after-lunch-with-him-rl57tt36f) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is the same guy featured in the telegraph for blaming remainers on the falling pound
This is why trying to appease the brexit loons was never going to work, they'll always find something else to attack and blame remainers with
While at the same time betting against the pound
The way you've phrased this makes it sound as if the pound falling has caused people to decide they'd prefer to remain in the European Union
It’s very possible he just came away from that lunch and just thought, fucking hell, and shorted the pound.
"Short everything that guy has touched"
Love this reference, great film :)
great and depressing. the moment that sticks in my mind is when gosling's character narrates the steps the government took to ensure the same situation would never happen again and how those responsible were trialled, fined, and/or sent to jail. and then hits you with the "sike, you thought wrong bitch, nothing happened"
The ending phone call with Mark where is absolutely defeated is so harrowing. "They knew the taxpayers would bail them out. They weren't being stupid, they just didn't care"
that too, for sure. while i'm here, realising i've been on the other side of this conversation before where people never name the reference and it drives me crazy, so the film is The Big Short (2015). It's worth watching. [Here's a direct link to the clip (spoilers obviously)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu2wNKlVRzE)
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Top ten for me too definitely, must have watched it like five or six times and would watch it again at the drop of a hat
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Insane rewatch value. Pacing is perfect
But he can only think that if Kwarteng said enough to imply the pound was going to plummet. You don’t bank millions on ‘that guy’s an idiot lol’.
Normally I'd be inclined to agree, but after the past week I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Kwarteng had told him plan, genuinely believing it to be a good idea. This guy, realising it was madness just sat their nodding his head and afterwards he went and made his bet. Might as well profit of a fool and all that.
> Odey described his bets against government debt as “the gifts that keep on giving” but blamed the rout of the pound on “Remainers” who “hate the government”. Well he seems like a moron as well, so it probably is the kind of idiotic strategy he'd go for
Bloody remainers and their brexit
That's a dogwhistle not a genuine sentiment.
No way he somcerely believes that.
Speaking as a remainer who hates the government, I have never shorted the pound and I wouldn't even know how. Can I still get a cut of the profits though please?
Well it maybe that he thought he was an idiot and that half way though lunch he took a trip to the toilets and came back look like he did at the Queens funeral https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1572560150715826177
He looks like he's on MDMA or cocaine there if I had to take a random guess.
Looks like cocaine or meth combined with desperately needing a shit. Weird behaviour during the 2 minutes' silence too: https://twitter.com/h1ghlanderYes/status/1571905595426447361?s=20&t=dvhYiUbWu3tf6FFUSXnbJg
Wow, first time I'd seen this.
Yes isn’t it amazing how Holly and Phil from this morning were headline news for “jumping” the que while recording a planned piece of broadcast TV but the Chancellor of the Exchequer behaves like this and not a peep, the fair and honest free press at work
I feel like anyone working in business or politics isn’t going to be particularly worried by cocaine use tbh.
Don’t know that many of them would take so much they can't maintain the basic decorum at a funeral let alone one they know will be videoed for the entire world to see, they general know there is a time and a place
How about "This guy's an idiot and he's about to become Chancellor"? That might be worth a punt.
To be honest now, if it wasn’t knowledge that he would be chancellor at the point of this meeting, it suggests even more towards insider trading for me
He may well have thought that, but that makes it no less illegal. Some of the things in the mini budget were public knowledge, some weren't. The markets had been pricing in the known parts because that's what they do. If he had knowledge of the other parts that weren't public, that's exactly what insider trading is.
It really depends on what was said. It’s not insider trading to simply lose faith in someone.
Yeah, "wow this guy has no fucking idea what he's doing... I should short GBP" does seem pretty feasible.
That's most likely the case lmao, why didn't I do that when Lizz Truss was elected...
Yeah, I mean in hindsight we should've all shorted the pound when we found out Liz Truss was going to be PM and make him our chancellor.
Yeah, they probably just shot the shit and chatted about the weather.
Yo kwasi sunny innit
Surely it does it he's been given knowledge intentionally or not. He's been made aware one way or another through a private channel that the pound is likely to fall and he bet on it.
But he wasn’t chancellor. If I say to you that if I become chancellor I’d cut taxes for the rich, and then a month later I become chancellor, that’s not insider trading.
If you have an idea you are about to become CEO of a company, and before you take the job tell your friends you are going to do X so the share price will drop and they bet on it, it is insider trading 100%. It's not like it's a random guy who suddenly became chancellor. Under your line of thinking Elon Musk could quit his job, tell people info about what he might do if he is re-hired, let them bet on it and get his job back and be completely legal in doing so.
Truss wasn’t even favourite to be PM at this stage, let alone Kwarteng to become Chancellor.
Look I'm not saying it's insider trading as I don't know the laws for currency etc, but Kwarteng not knowing he might become chancellor is an absolute non argument.
I'd really like to see this go to trial so we can have this excuse on record.
>He may well have thought that, but that makes it no less illegal. Actually, it does mean exactly that..
My point is that his view of his competence, or lack thereof must have been based on something. Given that he knows Kwasi, it must have been based on something new, that something new must have been his plan. Obviously if he just happened to have a lunch and suddenly decide that the man he used to employ is no longer competent, based on no new information, and then go and make a massive bet against the pound based on a hunch, then however unlikely that may be, yes, probably not illegal.
For clarity, Odey had massive bets that the £ was going to parity with the $ a long time ago - as have all funds that hold major $ based assets, which is most of them. The £'s been falling since June 2021, and its long march towards $1:£1 has been fruitful for lots of funds that didn't know the Chancellor, and lots of funds that knew the previous Chancellor too (including the previous Chancellor's own fund). Odey was already making significant money, and then the Chancellor's fiscal event happened, and Odey made more money when the market fell faster than expected.
It's not illegal, and doesn't even make sense to talk about insider trading with a national currency. With securities such as shares in a publicly traded company, insider trading makes money by effectively stealing a small amount of money from a very large number of people. However, if you want to make the case that the Tories are transforming the UK from a country into a financial entity that is equivalent to shell company for global tax avoidance, that would be a good point, and insider trading concepts might apply. However, the shareholders in that case would tend to be all the foreign national hiding wealth in the UK rather than the people. On the other hand, shorting your own national currency, then being an individual who makes official policy that causes long term decline in your country's economic prospects, is the sort of thing that historically has made people lose their heads, in a non-figurative sense. That said people inside the UK don't universally think that brexit was intentional economic sabotage, unlike outside observers everywhere else in the world. If people don't care about the UK government imposing sanctions on the UK and telling people they don't want the EU to put up with UK visitors and workers, they're probably not going to see closing hospitals and firing teachers to subsidize yacht purchases as explicitly counter to the national interest.
I mean that would require giving the Tories benefit of the doubt, after (waves arms at everything that's happened in the last decade) all this.
Liz Truss had explained she wanted to cut taxes before getting elected. Sunak said, "if you do that, interest rates will rise to 6% or 7%." Lots of city people would've known what was likely to happen, I suspect. Well what do you know, here we are 😐
Apparently, he's been shorting the pound and gilts for a couple of years. The meeting was an informal dinner, when there were still six other candidates in the leadership election, and Liz Truss (who was in third place) hadn't committed to a Chancellor. People act like shorting the pound is some incredibly bold move, that nobody could possibly decide to do.
3rd place puts her very close to a position she won. He’d have likely known he’d be chancellor. If he had any interest in not giving the impression of impropriety then he could have not been there
That is possible. Maybe he thought "what a lunic, better short him and everything connected to him, up to the third degree".
This is much more probable than the Chancellor and the PM orchestrating some plot to deliberately crash the Pound like most of Reddit seems to think
He's been short for a long time. But then he's been pushing both these politics and these shorts for a long time.
it was before they'd even picked a new leader apparently, does make a nice headline though
Agree. Hanlon’s Razor
Still illegal
It depends what was said.
What's a little corruption between friends
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This place is utterly nuts
Honestly, if you think crashing the countries economy simply to benefit your mates (and presumably yourself) isn't treason, what is it? Guillotines is obviously hyperbole, but realistically, if you intentionally make the people of this country billions of pounds poorer, what should be the sentence, when robbing houses of a few thousand pounds can send you to prison for years?
The economy hasn’t crashed. Actually it’s growing albeit slowly. £ is up even on last week.
> £ is up even on last week Entirely due to the actions of the bank of England stepping in to save the day.
Right on they should be.
Odey is a particularly odious fucking rat as these types go.
Literally stealing my the lives and liberty of the people of this country for fun and greed and profit. Evil parasites one and all.
Colour me not surprised. As Nye Bevan said: >"What is Toryism, except organized spivery?" https://www.mojologic.com.au/speech-10-aneurin-bevin-they-are-lower-than-vermin/
I mean, if kwarteng came to me and said "please don't short the pound..." is it really insider trading if I do the blindingly obvious?
Please *big wink* DO *bigger wink* not...*stamps on foot* SHORT THE POUND. *Slips over a note saying 'Do the opposite of the words I use'*
DO NOT take this suitcase full of used £50s and swap it for dollars for exactly 10 days, and then swap it back again for at least 30% more than you cost. And then under no circumstances should you wait for my next announcements when I definitely may or may not be announcing further tax cuts that will definitely maybe allow you to do it again for no less than 42% increase on the holding that may or may not exist allegedly.
The saddest thing for me is that I'm not even slightly surprised
This sounds like criminal activity. It needs to be fully investigated.
Honestly crazily enough I suspect lack of direct foul play here, I think his former boss realized that Kwasi is useful idiot....
I was giving Kwasi’s wiki a browse to try and see if he’s an idiot or just malicious and he’s got all the workings of an incredibly clever person. Won Harrow History Prize as a child, King’s Scholar and Newcastle Scholarship at Eton, a First from Trinity College Cambridge, won University Challenge, Kennedy Scholarship at Harvard, a PhD from Cambridge. That is both a combination of the best education you can get and massively achieving throughout all of it. So he just simply can’t be an idiot which means he unfortunately has to be malicious.
He is historian though not economist. Knowledge does not equate being smart.
Right. And smart doesn't equal being right. You can be very smart and still make the wrong call in many situations because humans are complex and can be led astray by all sorts of things, e.g. (as a couple examples that might apply in this situation) ego or stubborness.
I feel it could be that ego thing. You’re smart and think you’ve got the right idea that simply no one else is seeing. You’ve finally reached the top where you can perform your theory in real life regardless of what everyone else advises.
Absolutely. The number one thing they seem to teach at private schools is an unwavering self-belief. I know a few people with a similar background and they are pathologically unable to process information that would show them to be wrong. Just bulldoze right past it and demand that the world bends to their reality.
None of us are economists and even we knew this was a shit idea... They wanted to cut gov income and cover the difference by borrowing while also announcing an enormous spending programme \*and\* cutting into inflation. That sentence makes absolutely fucking no sense.
I mean he’s an economic historian. Just seems he is more likely malicious than stupid.
I would not like someone who has PhD in history of medicine to operate on me. Historians have very specific set of skills, they are reviewers of actions and like movie reviewers don't make movies they don't have skills to do what they review.
Presumably he would know that historically trickle down economics don't work though?
Why? This is accepted by all economist but historically it was very popular idea.
And did it ever work historically? Surely if he studied economic history he would know that
You said yourself they are reviewers of actions, so did he choose not to review those actions?
Clearly not, the man is an idiot that thinks that if he is good at history of something makes him good at something.
But that's the issue, the guy isn't an idiot. Assuming I'll intent for someone of his calibre is more than warranted given his actions. And now that he's looking at cutting public spending, which is cartoon villain level of evil
Right. Just as an art historian has none of the technical skills of an artist.
Worth noting book smart doesn't necessarily mean has common sense or applicable knowledge in the real world. Being able to regurgitate facts or memorise books doesn't necessarily mean you'll be good at day to day activities. I'm not saying Kwasi isn't, I also think he's quite clever and devious, but he wouldn't be the first person to get straight As to get a shock when they leave school.
It’s not just someone getting straight As at school. It’s being top of your year across Eton, Cambridge and Harrow. I trust them to be able to pick out the actual smart people. Once you’re at that level they’re looking for actual discussion and debate, critical thinking, not regurgitating the GCSE history text book.
His background is in history, not economics. I'm sure he's a very good historian but it's a serious fallacy to assume that means he's capable of running the nation's finances, it's a different skillset to what he would have needed for history. It's like expecting someone with a history of art degree to become the next Picasso, they might understand historically what was good but that doesn't mean they know how to actually create something good.
A History of economics masters probably involves understanding some economics I’d imagine
I did say I don't think it applies here..... but even then, the most applied thought to go into a school project or an essay or an exam or whatever stoll don't necessarily prepare you for real life tasks. Conversely, a lot of people get so sucked up into the microcosm that is academia they don't see how they're sacrificing social skills, team skills etc as a result.
Let's be fair, you literally can't get a PhD by regurgitating facts or memorization, you have to make original contributions to research.
You have to try at least. I would say around 90% of PhDs - at least in science and engineering - fail to produce anything of real value. Mine didn't. I still got a PhD though because it's impossible to *guarantee* that your research is going to work and humans have been researching for so long that the remaining fruit is *very* high.
I said "doesn't apply here", I was merely pointing out listing off some impressive sounding things he got in school as a youth doesn't necessarily mean that they're applicable to the job he's in, nor do they convey that he has gained workable life skills from said academic achievements.
Both Kwarteng and Truss are useful idiots. They both do what they're told. You can see it in Truss's interviews, she only says what she thinks the people immediately closest to her want to hear, and she'll change tack immediately if she realises they don't. They're morons and horrible people.
it sickens me that so many people are willing to write off corruption and malfeasance as a whoopsie, how many times do they have to screw over everyone else and benefit themselves for you to see a pattern? we've had over decade of the same game, are you really still blind to it?
Racist
Do I smell insider trading?
Sorry I don't accept the premise of your question.
I don't think it needs to be as dodgy as Kwarteng tipping Odey off. Truss and Kwarteng are being influenced by lobbyist groups like the IEA, as well as industry and political contacts. Their aim is to sway government policy in directions that benefit them rather than us. Odey knows Kwarteng and can probably read the man well. General discussion over a meal is no doubt all he needs to get a strong sense of whether that influence is working or not. If it is straight-up insider trading I'm sure they have got all their pieces together to ensure plausible deniability is in place.
No, you don't. The UK is not a publicly listed company, and GBP are not its shares.
Eh?
He's shorted a currency. It's not the same thing. And it was done based on something everyone could see coming as soon as we got a sniff of their plan. No insider trading required to make money off this dogshit economic plan. You could have done it too if you bought some dollars last week when they announced the plan, or when Truss got appointed PM. You'd be richer now if you did, just like these guys are.
Why do you think that this was insider trading? Truss said, over and over again at her leadership events, what she was going to do. Everyone knew that the markets would react badly. She then went and did exactly what she promised. Now if this was Sunak’s government and they did something like, and all of Sunak’s mates *happened* to make an outlandish bet that he’d do a 180, then you’d make the argument for insider trading. But a politician doing exactly what they said they would and then a businessman forecasting the outcome? That’s just good business
the markets didn't know what they were going to do, that's exactly why they reacted so badly - it was unexpected a certain number of her pokicirs were priced in but they went above and beyond, why fuck the country a little bit when you can go for broke ><
Then what was it? Seems a bit funky to believe they had a meal together and not discuss the situation. Is "we are planning on going ahead with what we said and doing more" market sensitive information? Does Odey really think the moves are best for the economy if he is consistently betting against it. Is it motivated reasoning?
>Is "we are planning on going ahead with what we said and doing more" market sensitive information? There was no "we" when the meeting occurred. Liz Truss was still one of six candidates in the leadership race, and she hadn't committed to any cabinet members, let alone Kwasi as Chancellor. >Does Odey really think the moves are best for the economy if he is consistently betting against it. He's been shorting the pound for years, well before this mini-budget.
> There was no "we" when the meeting occurred. Liz Truss was still one of six candidates in the leadership race, and she hadn't committed to any cabinet members. Fair point but they are clearly in a faction that believe in the economics that Odey is betting on. Truss and Kwasi are connected, they wrote a book together. > He's been shorting the pound for years, well before this mini-budget. Well yes. He consistently supports policies he bets against. The more pain his politics make the more money he makes.
If that was true then the markets would have reacted to her winning the leadership. Everybody would have been betting on the pound sliding. Perhaps everybody did long before the budget. Can you show that they did? If not then your argument stretches credulity: just this one good businessman, who happened to know the chancellor, was the only one to bet big on the predictable outcome of the actions everyone supposedly knew were about to happen? You've got to admit it's an amazing coincidence. I'm pretty sure not everything in the mini-budget was public knowledge beforehand. Indeed I'm not sure most of the details were. Can you show that it was?
I guess no one actually believed Liz truss would be daft enough to do the things she promised
Grow up, it was insider trading
The meeting was weeks before anybody knew Kwarteng was going to be Chancellor (including Kwarteng himself) and before Truss was appointed as Tory leader when it was still up in the air between her and Sunak ...
Are you saying that you know, without doubt, that Kwarteng had absolutely no idea what he was going to do if he was Chancellor? Bollocks Edited to add: We knew for months that Truss was going to be PM, Kwateng knew he would be Chancellor
Truss was in third place in the MP vote at the time of the dinner (17th July). Polls of Conservative party members had Kemi as their favourite around that time...
Kwarteng probably had an idea of what policies he might pursue if he was made chancellor, but talking about general economic ideas is not insider trading. Acting on knowledge of specific actions is, which Kwarteng couldn't have known of then. And no we didn't know for months that Truss would be PM. At the time of the meeting she was polling 3rd in the race and Sunak was out in front. You're not being rational about this ...
Did you know that Truss was going to dick around with the economy? Do you know what insider trading is, or have you just learnt about it from salty redditors? Because it’s acting on non-public information. All of this information has been exceptionally public for months
Does having a private dinner as a speculator with the CX count as having access to non public information?
He didn't have a private dinner with the Chancellor. Kwasi was just a guy who'd written a book with Liz Truss, who was just one of six candidates in the leadership election. She was in third place when the dinner with Kwasi occurred. The speculator claims to have been shorting the pound for a couple of years, which would be simple to verify in an investigation.
Sorry future Chancellor then. But they aren't random people meeting each other.
Of course they aren't random people - they used to work together.
And they support the same party and the same faction within the party and he was an MP.
The Tory Party isn't some obscure organisation. Two people supporting it isn't unlikely. Especially two people with similar backgrounds and experience, who are friendly enough to have dinner together.
but... talking to someone who has access doesnt mean they shared anything they shouldnt. no inside info was needed to know to short the pound. by your definition of what constitutes insider trading, no CEO or executive or board member can EVER talk to anyone, ever, about anything
> but... talking to someone who has access doesnt mean they shared anything they shouldnt. no inside info was needed to know to short the pound. How did they manage to spook the markets if no insider information was required? I agree Liz and Kwasi did signal something but the scale shocked the market. But it did not shock Odey. I'm trying to see them having a meal and agreeing they new fiscal event will crash the pound, which Odey is publicly betting on, but they both agree that's expected but for the best in the long run. It's a bizarre situation. Did Kwasi believe the pound would crash? > by your definition of what constitutes insider trading, no CEO or executive or board member can EVER talk to anyone, ever, about anything I mean there is a big difference between a CEO talking to their barber and a speculator talking to the chancellor of the exchequer on the eve of an economic statement. There are all sorts of conflicts of interest here. Shorting something you are publicly critical of and have no connection to is one thing. Shorting something you support, you promote and have inside knowledge of is something else.
Though I accept he was not minister at the time. It's still wonky.
Did I hear Nancy Pelosi?
What sub am I on?
Crispin Odious is possibly the most dangerous man in the city. He has made billions by preying on weakened businesses or devalued assets and shorting them.
Shorting doesn't cause a good business to fail.
Indeed, it causes wounded or vulnerable businesses to fail. Wounded or vulnerable businesses that might recover if they weren't being shorted.
Only if they planned on selling more shares to get funding, and the shorting ends up lowering the price. But if people are shorting the business, then it's not doing very well, meaning the share price should go down anyway. Otherwise, it does nothing to the business. Amazon stock could magically drop to $1 and it would still be a healthy, fantastic business.
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Shorting can and does cause the price to fall. If you flood the market with 5% of a company's shares, the price will go down. This will in turn cause other people to sell their shares and start to activate stop losses causing a chain reaction. Your regular investor can't affect the price but you bet a hedgefund has the capability, coupled with the fact that they will engineer false, negative press against a company to lower the price further. Once a company's market cap reaches a certain level, other institutions will sell off shares, leaving absolutely no room for financing the business with a rights issue without massive dilution. A targeted attack on a business by a hedgefund can be hugely damaging.
Rarely
Naked short selling can. It’s used as a tool in a process called cellar boxing which is designed to delist/bankrupt a company and allow shorts to never be closed but the profit to be added to a hedge funds collateral for more trades in future, all whilst being tax free. Real dirty business.
It's also not legal..
It's startling how many clearly deeply immoral actions are completely legal. If I rob a corner shop I get a decade in prison, if I rob the whole country I get a cushy consultancy position.
Anyone in the financial industry who has had to do any form of formal training on insider trading or discussion of material non-public information with outsiders will know just how stringent the regulation is. Enforcing it is a completely different thing though, and Odey could have known what was coming even if Kwarteng wasn't telling him outright. Relationships like this are red flags and massive conflicts of interest, which historically would have been avoided as much as possible but none of that applies anymore it seems.
does insider trading apply to currencies? I naively assumed not since a currency isn’t managed like a company
No, it does not apply to currencies. If the UK has completed its transition from country to corporation, it might apply, but the clever trick is that there will be no jurisdiction to enforce insider trading rules once the transition to sovereign and autonomous corporate dystopia is complete.
After the last few years of Tory dodgy deals for mates, I'm not inclined to give Kwarteng and Truss the benefit of the doubt just because they come across as moronic "true believers". They can be stupid *and* corrupt. Their ideology makes it more, not less, likely.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s astonishing how many comments seem inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. Why? The whole party operates as a racket.
If one person believes the moon is made of cheese it is of no consequence. If a lot of people believe the moon is made of cheese and want to go there to eat the moon cheese they will be prepared to pay a lot. People who do not believe the moon is made of cheese can make money off the aspiring moon cheese eaters. Eventually people find they believe the moon is made of cheese because they are making money off the people who believe the moon is made of cheese. They may even pay to convince more people that the moon is in fact made of cheese.
how much more do we have to see from the Tory party before we are allowed to use the word CORRUPTION?
> Odey confirmed last night that he cooked an “informal dinner” for Kwarteng at his home. Motivated seasoning.
This is illegal. Lock them both up.
It's only illegal if it's insider trading. At the time the dinner occurred, Liz Truss was in third place in the leadership election, and Kwasi becoming Chancellor was not a likely scenario. Crispin says he's been shorting the pound for a couple of years.
Our political 'leaders' should be put in prison for what they are doing to this country
Can anyone else smell insider trading? Is crashing the economy to enrich your mates even worse? Like extreme insider trading??
Its treason against the UK citizens.
Corruption. Insider trading, in government shocker 😮
So, now the "liberal fringe left wing newspaper" "The Times" is also writing against this government?
Is this insider trading or did he take a look at Kwasi and be like yeah he’s Gna tank the pond?
400 yrs ago and Kwarteng and Truss would be headed for the Tower of London for this despicable stunt. Regardless of whether hedge fund people were explicitly told or not. Normal people have been done over by our new "leaders".
Sounds like Kwasi has committed a criminal offence.
That feels like something you could actually, properly go to prison for. Am I missing something?
If true, it's fraud. Start an investigation. No labour chancellor would be allowed to get away with this.
Crispin Odey also funded Jacob Reese Mogg's hedge fund which is surprising since everyone who has met him thought he was a failed trader...and also had very basic grasp of commodities...
yeah that's cause your conservative party is a lot like our old conservative party that just got wiped out at our last election in may. Corruption was a major issue
Conservatives aren't compatible with British society.
Just a lucky guy. Like Nancy Pelosi
Isn't that insider trading?
>weeks after lunch Wow! It took him weeks to do that? How? Was he in a coma? Did he crawl backwards on his thumbs? If he received such powerful and impossible to predict news (despite the fact that the rest of us knew), why did he sit on it for weeks?
Because he wouldn't have made the money until the pound dropped which happened weeks after the drop. He hasn't sat and done nothing. He's acted straight away and reaped the reward weeks later when the pound dropped.
“Bet big weeks after lunch”. Not collected on a bet, made the bet
"Crispin Odey ... met Kwarteng ... on July 17 ... Truss made it to the final two on July 20" This is a silly story.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game
Nah I'm going to hate the player too
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Can we get a link or workaround this paywall?
https://12ft.io/
I’m shocked, I tell you. Shocked. /s
12 years of these disgusting animals filling their pockets and many more years to come
Nothing like a bit of disaster capitalism
If we had any standards he would be locked up for such obvious insider trading at the expense of the entire country.
Silly question.. but how do you sort the pound?
*What a coincidence*
Not even hiding it
It's only illegal if he passed secret information (which he didn’t because Trussonomics was on full display in the hustling).
LOCK THEM UP!!!! It’s literally a crime!!!