buzz

Getting ready to go to bed this evening, I am greeted by the sound of a small light aircraft in the bedroom.

Okay it was just a bumble bee the size of a ping pong ball.

I tried to reason with it for a few minutes before it scuttled under the bed and stopped buzzing. So I waited a few minutes for it to emerge, but I think it must like the comfort of the carpet or something.

I shall sleep in another room because I'm too tired to chase it around now.

french dressing

The French have come to town. But the zoom lenses seemed to be pointing towards newly demure Carla Bruni instead of Nicholas Sarkozy, in the very week when Carla's picture was up for auction at Christie's.

Of course, Mr Sarkozy has been trying to rebuild credibility back in his own country, where, after election, he seemed to go into something of downward slide, surrounded by the glint of overbling.

Visiting his near neighbours may be an interesting move, particularly as the Royals seemed to be able to dial up eleven on their own bling-ometer even to the extent of getting the horsemen in Windsor to wear special gold plated ceremonial suits - I wonder if that's a kind of Regal joke. I forgive Beckham's choice of golden football boots for the game against France, on account of his gaining his 100th cap, but there's some sort of quirky coincidence around all of this.
Interesting also to see that Dior clad la Bruni seemed to be on the platform for the important speeches delivered to Britain's great and good in French by her hubby. Many of the UK politicians seemed content to listen to the speech without translation and to be watching the new French reine des coeurs throughout. For the Sarkozys, the combination of visiting Windsor Castle, parading with horses and carriages through Windsor, plus a visit to Westminster Cathedral (ie the Catholic one rather than the Abbey) and then the Palace of Westminster all in the same day as touchdown is a pretty whirlwind experience.

And Nikki's speech in the gold encrusted Royal Gallery (which features distinctive pictures of two battles - Waterloo and Trafalgar) was all about entente cordiale and mutual support, including energetic references to working closely with the British in places such as Afganistan. Carla, who speaks significantly better English probably advised him not to mention the Guerre de Cent Ans, and will presumably be keeping an eye on things during the dinner occasions.

The next day should be quite interesting for the Browns who get a slot on what is primarily a State visit. After the big evening bash Wednesday night at Windsor Castle, the next day Mrs Brown entertains Carla, whilst Nicholas visits Gordon briefly in Downing Street before heading to a meeting at the Emirates Stadium.

More photo opportunities await.

china pigeon

Ambient activity, taking place in Leicester Square from 7am, will see the area filled with 5,000 Chinese origami pigeons.

Commuters and passersby will be encouraged to pick up one of the recyclable paper birds, which unfold to reveal a piece of modern Chinese artwork alongside information about the China exhibition, a map of how to get there and a money off voucher.

And if you fancy making a pigeon as good as the ones above from Emma, click through here to the video instructions or head over to Em's site which also features television coverage from the event.

feathers flying

2008 London Pillow Fight Leicester Square 1
by parcequemoiaussi

London at play on Saturday. Tomorrow it's the paper pigeons. Thanks, Sandrine for the coverage.

west

Out west today, well Fulham, anyway. A group of us had decided to go to an Italian for lunch and the one we'd originally selected was closed for Easter, so we ventured slightly further afield.

London on a Bank Holiday - not too much traffic, no congestion charge and easy parking in a side street close to the restaurant.

And amongst the topics, a few film reviews, the alternative ending for Harry Potter, which only a couple of us had read, a suggested date for a visit to a venue in the Strand for a gig in what used to be a men's loo, planning for the Wednesday paper pigeon stunt in Leicester Square and some general chit-chat around Easter.

Then a leisurely meander back via Battersea.

fizz

Excitement with multiple phone calls from the Dome to rashbre central. The chink of champagne glasses at the distant venue, where the Eagles were preparing for the fast lane.

And at the Dome, other members of the rashbre clan in fizz laden celebration as an engagement was announced, for a wedding planned in August 2009.

From afar we mused the type of setting which will be possible with a year of preparation. I've already suggested white swans pulling a carriage along a petal strewn path, but we shall see.

Congratulations to J & G.

Henley

Henley this afternoon, principally for a late lunch, but also a quick meander around the town. Set on the River Thames and well known for the Royal Regatta in July, there were only a few rowing today in the rather crisply cold weather.

We dodged sleet and rain to visit our enjoyable venue and surfaced to witness the few minutes of near sunshine, before the wind and rain returned.

Gardening Notes

Regular readers of rashbre central may not have detected the extent of rashbre acres spread today in sunshine glory despite the weather forecasts. The garden is on a kind of self help programme, with an occasional visit from a man with a trailer who somehow keeps it neat with two or three large, noisy machines.

And the garden has its sense of drama. The blackbirds commandeer various bushes for nesting and it all goes along in nice equilibrium until at some point a neighbourly cat appears and starts (a) patrolling and then (b) hiding in the bushes to er - surprise the birds.

So today, that's the scenario being played out, with the very street wise parent blackbird dodging around and making special alarm call sounds to warn the fledgling pilot young ones of the need for care.

eggsperiment

Simulation to test the effect of traders injecting false rumours into the global economic structure using creme eggs and mousetraps. Press the start button to see the findings.

koffie time?

Woah! - I've angemeldet and entered my waachtwoord tonight and everything is different again!

Amazingly, the Dow has leapt from the doldrums to add 420 points in a single day. Some would call this magic, some would call this a miracle and some might even attempt to make profit from this remarkable turnaround.

Perhaps everything I said yesterday was wrong. Perhaps the economy hasn't really got a hole in it.

Or maybe the Fed bouyed confidence by dropping base rate by a whopping 0.75% in a day, so that its now at its lowest level in years and close to the point where it can't really go any further. Or maybe even the further $200bn just slipped into the American economy through support for the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac government back mortgages has some tiddle of an effect.

Perhaps Mr Bush reads rashbre central too, and felt compelled challenge my points in his speech just delivered to the Pentagon. He emphasized that the world is a better place as a result of the Iraq war. The half trillion spent has been worth it.

Perhaps my thinking needs adjustment. Perhaps I've been sitting in this koffie shop in Amsterdam too long and the smoke is beginning to get to me. I'll be seeing pink bicycles next.

no problem

It looks as if the black holes in the global economies are starting to form now. I wondered some months ago what would happen to all the missing money and where it would finally come to rest.

Bush, Brown and a few other politicians have attempted to influence outcomes by lobbing extra reserves into the system in an attempt to stave off the problems. For Bush it was relevant to the US election year and better for him to hold problems until the other side of his term. Brown had already been given a hospital pass when he took the premiership with the interesting twist that he'd somehow thrown the ball to himself.

So now we can hear the gentle popping of major corporations. The Northern Rock was the highest visibility UK one, with around £50billion of missing money so far and climbing. Bear Stearns was the fifth largest investment house in the USA until a few days ago and the value at buyout of some $236m compares with $18bn around a year ago - or some 0.14% of the prior value.

In a few days, around 3-4% has been wiped from stock exchanges around the world, notably except the Dow, where the amount of intervention has kept it around neutral. The Fed dropping $30bn into help JP Morgan Chase absorb Bear Stearns may have just tipped the Dow positive. Somehow things seem to be on a very delicate edge at the moment with what seem to be huge quantities of reserve funding being used to plug the various gaps.

All of that overlooks the money pit of the Iraq war. Some would (perhaps cynically) say that Bush's original involvement with Iraq was partly done for economic reasons. Beyond all of the Weapons of Mass Destruction and Resolution 1441 ambiguities that led to the war, there was also a view in some areas that the short term boost that followed the intense part of the war was a way to bolster the dot bombed US economy. Not to mention keeping a hold on middle eastern oil.

Experts such as the Centre for Economic and Policy Research tend to disagree that the 'stoke an economy through war' has anything beyond a short term effect and that by year six a war would have major negative economic consequences for the United States - we are currently at year five.

The spending on Iraq totals somewhere north of $400bn from the US so far and a current run rate of around $8bn per month, according to the CSIS Iraq Study Group.

Just starting to add together some of the numbers listed here illustrates the amount of money flow that drifts towards a hole of some sort. Whilst they were disaggregated it was difficult to see the scale of the challenges. Now there's the visible accumulation of loss and the knock on effect of this into the next layer of organizations.

As an example, another UK organisazation, HBOS, lost 12.5% after Bear Stearns, because of its rumoured links to US sub-prime. Other UK financials like Barclays dropped 9% and RBS by 8% and in the USA Merrill Lynch dropped 5%, Morgan Stanley 8% and CitiGroup 6%. More scarily, intra day, Lehman Brothers dropped 46% but corrected after the chief exec issued a statement.

The problem now seems to be that most of the conventional corrective tactics have been played. The last few Bank rate reductions haven't worked. Last week's $200bn injection by the Fed didn't work. The UK and US Government are now both bailing out a significant financial services institution. And still somewhere there's 'missing money' which has been driven by corporate commission-driven sales tactics and efforts to boost global economics on the back of warfare.

I'm sure the politicians will want to make the best they can of a lumpy carpet, but the dirt is really beginning to pile up. The only vacuum in town seems to be the one created by this ever expanding global deficit.

Amstel

My plane arrived slightly early tonight, so I was feeling smug as I negotiated the double revolving doors to the outside of the airport.

Then whoosh! A sudden barrage of tiny hailstones that lasted about ten minutes. I was waiting for Guus to show up in his big black Chrysler and had arranged to meet him by the vast television screen near the airport taxi rank.

There were about fifteen other people with similar plans huddled into the little glass shelter, and I was just getting ready to make a dash to the other distant empty shelter, when I spied the distinctive car and the reassuring flashing of headlights. An effortless drive into rainy Amsterdam and now I'm sitting with a local beer in a bar around the corner from this street.

Tomorrow and Thursday I will have my nose to the grindstone, so I guess I won't have much time for wandering although I expect a group of us will pitch up for a dinner tomorrow evening. Still. Amsterdam's distinct character with canals, narrow streets, merchant houses, bicycles, cafes and bars, sweet smelling cigarettes (!), liberalism, tourists and bustle permeates even a short visit.