Mwynwen - Christmas Carol part 2
By Diana the Valkyrie
They will own rather more than all the chocolate in the world.


Cameron:

Oh, Gordelpus. One loony isn't enough? Wherefore did I sin, that such grief is
heaped upon me bonce. "And what are you supposed to be, darlin'? Brittania
rules the waves?" She held her head up, looked down her nose at me in a snooty
kind of way, and said "I, peasant, am The Duchess." Two loonies. One thinks
she's a camel, the other one's royalty. Gordelpus. Well, beggars can't be
choosers, if they gave me a budget I could hire some decent superheroes. I
wonder what Batman costs. I bet it's a good few bob. Tiara on head, whip on
hip. What does she think she is, Wonder Woman? Catwoman? Or both?

"What's the aggro, guv'nor?" asked Min. Blimey, I think I preferred it when
she called me chief. Nice tits on it, though. "Siddown," I said, "how can I
talk to you when you're up on the ceiling?" She floated down, crossed her legs
and sat on thin air, but at least she was at chair level. The problem is
discipline. How do you keep discipline in the loony bin? The problem, is
loonies. The Duchess sat regally in an upright chair, like it was a throne,
tiara on head. "The problem," I said, "is chocolate."

"Chocolate?" they chorused, and looked at each other. I nodded. "You probably
heard that someone managed to corner the chocolate market?" "Yes," said the
Duchess. "What do you mean, corner?" asked Min. Gordelpus. Don't they teach
them nothing in school no more? "It's futures," said the Duchess. "What," said
Min, "someone stole the future?"

"Can it, Duchess," I said, "you're confusing the Camel. OK, brief lesson in
the economics of chocolate. Chocolate is an agricultural commodity, a crop.
Comes out of the ground, well, on bushes, actually. Anything you heard about
chocolate mines and treacle wells is cobblers. Mostly grown in Africa and
South America. The farmers grow the cocoa beans, and sell them on the
international market; mostly to North America and Europe. But at the time they
plant and cultivate, they don't know what the crops will fetch. So they sell
them on the futures market." "They sell the future?" "No, they sell a promise
to deliver ten tons of cocoa beans, at a certain day in the month. For cocoa,
that's on the 25th of each month, well, not actually every month, there's only
options for March, May, July, September and December." "On March, July,
October, May, The Ides ..." muttered The Duchess. I gave her a funny look. She
shut up.

The girls were still awake, so I pressed on. "So, a promise to deliver ten
tons of cocoa beans on the 25th September is called a "September Future". And
the people who make chocolate can buy these futures. It means that both sides
can make firm plans, because they know the price they'll be buying and selling
at." "So chocolate makers buy the futures, what's the problem?" "No, anyone
can buy or sell futures. And because what you're selling is a promise to
deliver, you obviously don't have to actually own any beans, you might think
that the price is going to fall, so you sell a November future for $100/ton,
hoping to be able to buy the beans for $90 when the time comes to deliver. Or
maybe you don't buy beans, you just buy a matching future."

"Who makes sure that there aren't more futures than there are beans?" "No-one.
And that's the whole point. There's lots of people buying and selling futures,
there's people buying and selling options on futures ..." "Whoa, what's an
option?" "It's the right to buy a future at a given price, so you might pay
$1000 for the right to buy a September future for $120/ton, if the price is
less than that obviously you don't exercise the option, but if the price is
above $120, you can still buy the future for $120, and make a profit. And then
there's future hedges, option hedges, put options, call options, butterflies,
inter-market arbitrage ... " "Whoa. Whoa! We actually need to understand all
this?"

I threw the book at Min, 'Futures Trading for Dummies.' Very nice tits, I
wouldn't mind giving it one. Two even. "Yeah. Read it up." "So what's the
flap," asked Min, "why call in the Camel Corps?" "Cry havoc and unleash the
dog patrol" muttered the Duchess. "Ha bleedin' ha," I retorted wittily. "A
corner in the market is when someone's bought more futures, options,
butterflies and whatnot than there is actual cocoa. And that means that come
the delivery date for the December futures, the 25th, they will own rather
more than all the chocolate in the world.

That shut them up.

I sat and watched them as the full horror of the situation dawned on them.
"But. But," said the flying female. The Duchess just went white, her mouth
opening and closing slowly like a goldfish chewing gum. "But December 25th is
Christmas," said Min. "Smart girl," I said, "you are now only fourteen
questions from a million." "No chocolate," croaked the Duchess. "You got there
eventually," I said. "But no chocolate at Christmas," said my fine feathered
friend, "that's, that's ..." "Evil," said the Duchess. "Now you see why
everyone's running round like headless turkeys," I said, "and why we've called
on the services of the only official police-sanctioned superhero organisation
in the world. Dum dum dum! The Dog Patrol. Batman, cry me a river."

"Do we know what evil mastermind is behind this?" asked Min. "This dastardly
plot," I explained, using a word I'd been hankering to use for years, "comes
from the person known only as ... Carol Christmas, via the corporate vehicle,
CarCorp." "Carol Christmas?" "Yes." "That's a real name, not just a pseudonym?
I guess somewhere in the world there was a man called Mr Christmas, the woman
he married became Mrs Christmas and they are such cruel and uncaring parents
that that they would name their child Carol?" "Yes, and look what the result
is. Carol Christmas owns all the chocolate in the world, and will soon be
holding the world to ransom. Unless we pay the sum demanded, and we haven't
had the demand yet, so we don't even know how much it will be, there will be
no chocolate this Christmas."

"Can't we just make an arrest?" asked the Duchess. "On what grounds? Carol
legally owns the contracts, bought fair and square. It's just that no-one ever
imagined that anyone would actually do this, actually corner the market in
cocoa beans, especially at this time of year." "So if it's legal, there's
nothing we can do!" asked Min. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that," I replied.
"But the only alternative to legal methods is ... " said the Duchess. "I
definitely didn't hear that, could you say it again?" I lied. "You're asking
us to commit ..." "Cough cough cough. Sorry, I was coughing, didn't hear you,
say again?" Gordelpus, I bet Gordon doesn't have this problem with Batman. You
just point him at the villains and come along later with the meat truck.

"Oh."

"And by the way, this conversation didn't happen, I wasn't in the office
today, and you weren't either." "Oh." "And anyone who thinks that the
Metropolitan Police has anything called the Camel Corps probably needs a few
months in Coney Hatch." "Oh." "Plausible deniability, ladies, and by the way,
the instruction to do this job didn't come straight from the Prime Minister's
office."

"Wow."

"In fact, it didn't come direct from the ever loving and rather large mouth of
the PM himself. So you can get that thought right out of your pretty little
heads. But!"

"But?"

"But," I said, "a little reindeer has whispered into me shell-like that if the
non-existent Dog Patrol can bring off this non-existent request to solve this
non-existent problem, then next year our request for funding will be looked on
considerably more sympathetically, and maybe we can hire a few more
superheroes and get this outfit up to par with the big Yank superhero groups."

"Wow," said Mwynwen, and I could see the stars in her eyes, or at least a set
of corporal's stripes. "And maybe we can replace that gold-painted cardboard
tiara that's beginning to get soggy with perspiration and fall apart," I
continued, holding out another carrot and ignoring the stream of daggers that
travelled my way from the Duchess' eyes.

Min took up the ball and ran with it, "And if we had a bunch of heavy hitting
heroes here, we'd likely get some vicious villains too, with creepy costumes
in lycra and spandex, and not just those bank robbers with stupid woolly
balaclava masks. Maybe someone will try to steal London Bridge or something!"
"We already sold it to a bunch of Yanks," reminded the Duchess. "Blimey, what
bunko artist pulled off that one? Well, maybe they could kidnap a princess or
a butler." "Come off it," I said, "we'd pay for them not to be returned."
"Hijack the Albert Memorial?" "Steal the Crown jewels? I mean, think big!"
"Yes," I summarised, "and if we get lucky, some supervillain could destroy the
whole of London, think of the budget we'd get then."

I tried not to grin as we all sat and contemplated this awful possibility. I'd
get a promotion to Superintendent, at least!

Oh yes. Oh yes. Very nice tits indeed.