Given the string of problems created by hedge funds, derivatives, investment funds, insurance companies, pension funds, mortgage securities and hairy bank loans over these few years, it is becoming increasingly apparent that high flying investment managers and financial whiz kids are not as great as they seem in spite of their insistence in paying themselves billion dollar bonuses.

As if these were not enough, Gordon Brown the architect of the British economic miracle of the Blair years is now thinking of printing money – ₤150 billion worth. This sort of makes him roughly equivalent in competence to the whole Japanese Occupation Government in Malaya from 1942 – 1945.

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Tags: bank-loans, competence, derivatives, dollar bonuses, economic miracle, financial whiz, gordon-brown, hairy bank, insistence, insurance-companies, investment managers, investment-funds, japanese occupation, malaya, mortgage securities, pension-funds, printing money, spite, whiz kids

This is Money – Hedge will be one of those words forever linked to the great financial crisis of 2008. The hedge funds were supposedly money-minting schemes whereby fantastically intelligent financial whiz kids write fantastically complex programmes to ensure they make a profit whatever the direction of the market.

That many hedge funds were spectacularly successful in the 2003-7 bull run and then spectacularly crashed in the current bear market indicates "hedging" may have had little bearing.

Hedging is rife too in the energy markets, widely used to attempt to control industrial costs and nowhere more starkly than in the aviation fuel market.

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Tags: aviation fuel, bear market, bull run, energy markets, financial crisis, financial whiz, fuel market, money, whiz kids