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Another Voice

Matthew Parris

Wednesday, 10th September 2008

First the housing market collapsed. Now I fear the trade in llamas will be next

In these straitened days, when the international money markets teeter nervily between relief and panic, and stock exchanges hang upon the slightest twitch of one of Alistair Darling’s implausible eyebrows, I must be mindful of my position in the camelid world. If I sneeze, the British llama market may catch pneumonia.

Not that I am any sort of a spokesman. Llamas and alpacas have greater authorities than me to pronounce on their welfare and prospects. Wise and expert breeders in Britain constitute a community in which I’m a very minor player — indeed I fear my subscription to the Camelids Chronicle may even have lapsed. But regular references in national newspaper and magazine columns to our (until today) four llamas here in Derbyshire — their lives and loves, their setbacks, hopes and fears — probably add up to a substantial proportion of all published British journalism on these delightful, soft-footed browsers. My writings may have done something to boost market confidence and customer interest in the characterful creature as a viable grass-mower and reliable breeding machine. And in markets of every kind, confidence is the key.

So my next remark is made fearfully. Shut your ears, ye bears of Wall Street, lest I do to the market for cloven-footed biungulates what George Soros did to the pound sterling, and Friday 12 September become a kind of Black Friday in the annals of the camelid trade.

For I think the bottom may be falling out of the llama market. Your share portfolio may have plummeted, your job may be at risk and your house may soon be worth a fraction of what you could have sold it for last year. Now your llamas may be depreciating too.

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Berry Carter

October 31st, 2008 9:28am

Oh Dear Matthew
Alpaca ownership maybe but llama ownership was never about making money. Llama ownership has nothing to do with stocks and shares and mortgage stress in Wall Street or anywhere else. When people ask me "how do you make money with llamas?" as they have done repeatedly for twenty five years my answer never varies. "You have made your money" I say "and you are seeking something to do with it. The llama is a work of art, a four legged work of art that not only is good to look at but priceless to know.

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