Jolly Displeased....

Whilst Citigroup is almost old news, it will probably be making very large news tomorrow. Hence the mood of this house, and, of the lovely pink FT.  From the title of one of the fluff articles and the tone of the rest of the paper -- Jolly Displeased is the mood de jour.  

I began my day today in Mayfair, having brunch with the children.  Lest you think we've lost our frugal minds, brunch was courtesy of a family relative, a widower who a few years ago inherited a rather dauntingly large family business to look after and has done quite a brilliant job of it all.  At the same time she has raised an adopted son who is now 16 and was a welcome addition to the brunch table as he could hold a conversation with us and simultaneously keep my children enthralled.  Even I cannot do that.   After brunch we waltzed through the Tate Modern. For a day that started with the first magical snowflakes we'd seen and went on to more marvelous things, well, you would think we could shake the gloom.  But the conversation did not waver much from The Gloom and The Doom.

The understanding I had reached about the state of things quite a long time ago is now the prevailing mood.  So where does that take us?  Is it mood capitulation or is it something far far worse???   

Citigroup is somewhat like that big spider in the Tate turbine hall - it is sitting menacingly overhead, interrupting my brain.  It has been doing so for quite a while.  "We make money the old-fashioned way, we earn it" was an old Smith Barney ad featuring a dishevelled eyebrowed fellow.  It always made me laugh and conveyed a bit of a winking sincerity on the part of Smith Barney, and now, well, he just looks very very sad and very very tired.

The Best Bank

Through the post with a resounding thud this morning comes a Special Admissions Ticket to an event held at the rather glamourous sounding Palmetto Ballroom.  But, alas, it is not a glamorous ticket but rather a ticket to attend a meeting for the proposed merger of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch.  Still looking for a glamourous angle I look up the location online.  If I were to spend my last pennies on attending I would be able to do a bit of shopping at the important sounding International Trade Center where the Palmetto Ballroom is located.  I could go to "Belle Ville" and buy some "Chic European womenswear".  I know I should not say it, but, I do wonder what North Carolina's idea of "Chic European" is.  Or - oh - I could go to the Bank of America Store and buy hats, keychains, mugs branded with the BoA logo.  Feeling giddy with it all, I press the link for the BoA store.  Amazing.  They have an online merchandising shop - www.bankofamericastore.com.  It is an interesting array of toys for what presumably would be the children of American bankers.  Tumbling Towers wooden blocks game, a travel-sized naval battle game, a disfunctional looking yo-yo, and best of all, a piggy bank...

I've spent weeks researching banks and here is the best one found before my very eyes.  It has a cork in its nose to keep the money from falling out...

Strictly come spending...

After the U.S. markets closed yesterday I turned the BBC Live News on to see what they had to say about it all.  Well...they were much like my dear friends on the matter - they were on the glass half-full side and discussing "Strictly Come Dancing" and John Sergeant's departure.  In that moment, I decided I do love the BBC.  The truth of the matter is, if they had put economists on to discuss the markets it would likely have been just as meaningless as the SCD debate (Yes - acronyms seem necessary when dealing with an economics blog).  MissMarketCrash loves economists, but, truly, what they say today makes little difference when we are on a high speed trip down the whirlpool and things are changing by the second. But, non-the-less, I'd rather see a sexy economist than talk about Strictly Come Dancing.  Oh dear -- do not run away dear readers....read on, I am indeed capable of escapism...

Now that there is not much left in the way of a reliable reality, I look at my children as if they could be Charlie, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Not to win a golden ticket, but, more importantly, to be sheltered from the gloom and doom surrounding us.  I remember most clearly the message of the movie was about being able to shape your own version of reality - that how the world was was to a large degree shaped by how you perceived it.  Now that is heavy philosophy 101 stuff but it was more or less a light-hearted song about candy which conveyed it to me at a young age: 

"If you want to view paradise

Simply look around and view it.

Anything you want to do, do it.

Want to change the world?

There's nothing to it."

After I got over a very lengthy childhood crush on Jean Wilder I grew up and umm...that little song was embedded in me.  It was no doubt an American thing which has been post-modernly translated into Nike's "Just do it" ad campaign.

Now how to keep the next generation on the sunny-side can-do side of the street?  The economists should curb talking to the government and go straight to Hollywood for some reality-shaping.  But I think that is what Hitler did.