It’s not that I don’t think you know what you’re doing, but we hired you to spiff up our military honor guard with some great new moves, and I’m just not sure about your plan. Trust me, I know what I’m doing. Okay, I’m sorry, what was your name again? Lamar. Okay Lamar, so as I understand it, the honor guard marches up, stops, and everybody just hurls their rifles straight into the air, is that it? That’s it. It’s going to be impressive as hell. The weapons go straight up and come straight back down. The crowd won’t soon forget this show! You’re sure these guns won’t rotate or anything? They shouldn’t. They’ll all have bayonets on them, so I think that should help stabilize them. Okay, Lamar. But worst-casing it, if it gets confusing, how will each soldier know which one is his when they come back down? That’s easy. Every rifle will have a yellow ribbon on it. Brilliant, huh? Join the Oddly Enough blog network Follow this blog on Twitter at rbasler South Korean honor guards perform during a ceremony for foreign military leaders visiting for the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition, October 18, 2011. -Hak More stuff from Oddly Enough

* Bankers tell traders cost of finance will soarLONDON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - The rising cost of finance will squeeze small and medium steel market players, traders and distributors told a steel conference.”The financing of working capital has become a major problem over the last year,” Georges Kirps, vice president of the steel and metal distribution association Eurometal told the Metal Bulletin steel conference late on Monday.”Banks are squeezing credit, at least if you are not one of the big names. For some middle-sized and for the small traders this clearly is a big problem.”Although European steel stocks had fallen in volume terms, they were at a level of about 75 days of sales, slightly more than just a few months ago, Eurometal said.”These days of sales have gone up over the last two or three months by a few days because there are less sales, not because there is more stock,” Kirps said.”If stocks in days of sale fall to 65 days that will release 2.5 billion euros ($3.4 billion) across the sector.”Other traders and steel players also expressed concern about increasing cost of financing and the gloomier economic situation which is likely to weigh on steel demand in the last quarter this year.Ralph Oppenheimer, chairman one of the largest private steel trading companies said he had never seen bankers so worried as they were this month.”Some of them really are warning us that they may be forced against their wishes to curtail the lines of their offering,” Oppenheimer said.”It is clear that everybody is going to have to pay a lot more for the credit and the cost of finance is going to go up… Banks have got such enormous losses to make up that they are becoming greedier and greedier when it comes to the charges that they levy on their customers.”Speakers and delegates said steel capacity utilisation will see further cut in the next few months in Europe, in response not only to temporary demand weakness but to a chronic supply over capacity and slow growth expectations.ArcelorMittal , the world’s largest steelmaker has already announced a number of temporary closures at European plants and said on Friday it will permanently close its liquid phase steel production at its site in Liege, Belgium.”What we have seen in the papers so far is just the beginning of major and more important steps of closures which will come, or this may also be solved by merger and acquisitions,” Kirps said.”I am not negative about demand. I feel that probably we will have seasonal upturn in the first half 2012 but in the long run there is a latent over capacity in the European market which has to be solved.” ($1 = 0.727 Euros)