A bit off topic this. . . But it’s fairly rare to come across a blog and think: ‘That really should be published on a mainstream news site”.
Ever rarer to think the second thought that goes: ‘Nahh: Big Media really couldn’t cope with that.”
Michael Fowke’s Money Is The Way is one such blog.
This is the kind of satire that Private Eye should be publishing, but probably can’t -– at least not under the Middle English editorship of Ian Hislop.
Populated by a weird cast of characters including Big Herb, Ganesh and Fowke’s many ‘mystical children”, Money is a cackling, insane, satire on our bust financial system.
Fowke –- who describes himself as ‘the world’s foremost financial shamen’— sounds like a Bible belt preacher who has imbibed the collected works of Black-Scholes, Gurdjieff-Ospensky, Ken Kesey, Rabindranath Tagore and The Sopranos.
His fake mysticism finds its echo in the equally mystical trust our leaders placed in unfettered financial markets.
In one post, Fowke arraigns FT reporter Neil Hume before the “ghosts of the dead financiers’ unmystical activities committee”. He asks whether Hume has ever been “invaded by a ghost, while asleep”.
And here’s Fowke on the fate of ‘beautiful’hedge fund managers cast adrift on some godforsaken astral plane:
And do not fear the burning! It is not a hellish burning, the sort of burning that comes to MPs, BBC reporters or union officials. No, it is a heavenly burning. A burning of money that never ceases. You must believe in this burning.
The bits in which Fowke sounds like a denizen of Bada Bing are also worth a read. In particular, I recommend a post entitled ‘I ain’t going to no friggin’ Davos, man“.
Fowke won’t be to everyone’s taste. This ain’t Bridget Jones country. Paul Murphy, Hume’s colleague on FT Alphaville, says Fowke makes him feel nervous.
Sounds like a recommendation to me.
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