Monster Markets

Millions of dollars were wiped off of the value of shares yesterday, after rumours that a giant octopus was attacking New Jersey swept Wall Street. Amazing scenes ensued as panic stricken brokers rushed to sell shares in East Coast insurance companies, property management firms and real estate firms. "When giant sea creatures start wrecking buildings on the Hudson, property is the last thing you want your money in," explained Whib Futter, a financial analyst at New York's Labium Brothers Bank. "Once that sort of thing has happened, people just don't want to live anwhere they see as vulnerable not only that, but just think of the insurance claims!" Futter believes that the shares crash would have been even worse if the monster involved had been amphibious. "Then far more people would have been threatened - potentially the whole of the US could have been under threat," he muses. "Just look at that scare back in the 1970s, when that story about the giant penguin coming ashore in California did the rounds - billions were lost in the ensuing panic. At least two banks went under as a result." Share prices experienced a modest recovery when it emerged that the rumours were completely unfounded - the result of a broker overhearing a colleague describing a vivid dream he's had after falling asleep whilst watching It Came From Beneath the Sea . "This latest farce just goes to show the need for greater regulation of the financial sector," opines Dr Rock Astershagg of the Harvard School of Catering. "It's utterly ludicrous that the fate of the economies of the western world could be dependent upon what old film is on the late show!" However, Sir John Poncey-Twyatt, of the London Stock Exchange, rejects such claims, believing that the octopus scare was simply an isolated incident. "With the current instability in the banking sector, the markets are unusually jumpy and susceptible to rumour. Under normal circumstances this sort of thing wouldn't happen," says the eminent merchant banker, who also believes that such scares are purely an American phenomena. "Here in the UK, we breed a different type of broker - far too level-headed to be worried by silly stories about monsters!" Nevertheless, only two weeks earlier, there had been a massive run on sterling and millions wiped off the value of bank shares, after stories that a mutated moth which fed on the paper used to make bank notes, had been released into the Bank of England vaults by al Qaeda terrorists. "Well, obviously that's completely different," he splutters. "Mutated money-eating moths are far more credible than giant octopuses! Besides, the source was impeccable - a friend of a chap who'd gone to Eton with the brother-in-law of a very senior Secret Intelligence Service fellow! Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak!"

According to Astershagg, the financial markets have long been vulnerable to insane rumours. "The 1929 stock market crash was the result of mass hysteria triggered by stories that an evil race of winged troglodytes had emerged from a huge crack in the ground in Nebraska," he reveals. "It started when a young commodities broker called Nathan Bentwick ran onto the trading floor with his trousers around his ankles, bleeding profusely from the anus, screaming that he'd been taken roughly from behind by a flying ape whilst walking though Central Park." In the ensuing chaos rumours that the troglodytes had invaded Manhattan and were ravishing the male population spread like wild fire. "They thought it was the end of civilisation and just sold everything," Astershagg says. "People were so terrified by the prospect of being ass-raped by the creatures they were jumping of off skyscrapers to escape their imagined foe! Half the banking community started dressing as women in an attempt to avoid being sodomised by the flying apes." The madness only started to abate after the unfortunate Bentwick was committed to a lunatic asylum, following his arrest for forcing his way into City Hall and masturbating over the mayor's desk. In more recent times, oil prices rocketed after supposedly reliable reports that the Iranian government was using its nuclear energy programme to revive the Ayatollah Khomeini, and mutate him into a giant. "The CIA allegedly believed that they were going to use this giant Muslim cleric to attack Middle Eastern oil field," says the academic. "The whole thing turned out to be a hoax - the leaked CIA report had been faked by a couple of college kids as a prank." Despite such evidence of the irrationality of the markets, Poncey-Twyatt believes that the blame lies squarely with the authorities. "Look, if the government got its bloody finger out and brought in some proper measures to defend the country against monster attacks, then people wouldn't panic when they hear these rumours," he says. "Clearly, what we need isn't more regulation, but giant laser cannon mounted on the roof of Parliament. That'll calm the markets down. It stands to reason, doesn't it?"