THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

(LHC) is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is located in a tunnel which travels 27 kilometres under the Jura mountains on the Franco-Swiss border.  The LHC can fire opposing beams of protons or lead ions at a speed of 99.9999991% the speed of light.  The collider has been constructed by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) with the intention of testing various predictions of high energy physics, including the existence of the Higgs Boson and of the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetry.

The elusive Higgs Boson is the last unobserved particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.  An experimental observation of the Higgs Boson would help to explain how otherwise massless elementary particles cause matter to have mass.  More specifically, the Higgs Boson would explain the difference between the massless photon and the relatively massive W and Z Bosons. 

If you haven’t a clue what I am talking about, you are not alone; I haven’t a clue what I am talking about either. My ability to discuss, or explain high-energy particle physics has about as much credibility as, say, President Nicholas Sarkozy’s ability to explain the credit crisis. 

The French and current European Union (EU) President could not resist a recent photo opportunity while holding a copy of Das Kapital, to announce the death of capitalism. At the EU summit of 15 October, Mr Sarkozy also stated:

“I would propose a simple principle, that no financial institution should escape regulation and supervision. I am thinking, for example, of the regulation that we must apply to rating agencies and of the necessary supervision of hedge funds…we must also work to eliminate the grey areas that undermine our efforts at co-ordination, in this case the off shore centres.” (Reuters, 15 October 2008)

We obviously all must have missed something over the past few months, when we did not realise that AIG, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers were really hedge funds operating out of the British Virgin Islands, or Cayman, not to mention Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, those well-known off shore banks. Well, one of them is based on a rock, which must be close to an off shore tax haven. In Europe, we should also not forget those other ‘off shore devils’: Hypo Real Estate Bank, Dexia Bank and Fortis Bank, all of which have been expensively rescued by the taxpayer in decidedly onshore jurisdictions.