fatality

Docklands today, with a speedy trip across on the Jubilee Line but a later much slower transit involving the Overground railway network.

Sadly, a fatality at Earlsfield had stopped the trains for what became hours. They'd appear on the board, edge towards getting a platform, become delayed and then finally get cancelled. One train even had a platform allocated and we all sat on it until it too was cancelled. Of course one's mind flicks to the sad cause and its human impact but there is a kind of commuter parallelism about these 'incidents' which often don't get any detailed references at all. In fact, the Network Rail announcements and management of the entire situation was about as bad as it can get. No compassion or leadership, unclear and incorrect messages, muffled explanations and all the apprentice platform helpers shrugging their shoulders.

Earlier I'd been watching the dials and arrows in Canary Wharf, where Reuters and various large plasma screens flickered out further messages of general economic doom. I waited by the big ticker that scrolls around the edge of a building to look for an uptick. Long wait, with most companies again drifting downwards. Then across to the television screen. More negativity.

So whilst waiting for trains, I spotted today's Evening Standard referring to Gordon's speech. He was implying the need for experience rather than 'apprentices'. Unfortunately, I couldn't help thinking of the parallel between the handling of the rail incident and those of the recent economic situation.

Large Hadron Rap

The LHC was superfly until it got a puncture.

Or maybe the rolled up superdimensions that hide the rest of the force of gravity will unravel and create persistent micro black holes. You decide.

reality is an obstacle to hallucination

Sometimes everything unravels in some kind of exotic cosmic thread. Maybe we could see the space station tonight as we looked into the otherwise ink-black sky, which appeared in the time between daylight in north London and darkness a few twinkling tube stations later. It had seemed so simple when we started the afternoon, with even a plan and some documentation, but events contrived to land us instead in a dim sum restaurant in Gloucester Road with way more dim than any sum person could eat. Happiness. Longevity. Health. Peace.

tv on the radio as a personal soundtrack

The plans just slid sideways during mid evening. We were talking about having personal soundtracks one minute and the next it had flipped to being very late. Somehow we didn't make it to the Italian restaurant. I blame the Bison Grass.

Fortunately we had some comfortable chairs and were able to pull them it a circle. Much later or by now it could be called 'very early', we wandered the streets around parts of the City before winding the evening to a close. Past the ex Midland Bank headquarters which is now a wine bar, a financial office block with the doors taped across and crossing the street near the fully lit London AIG building, which I suppose is now a US Government subsidiary.

My soundtrack for the evening would have to be Dear Science by TV on the Radio, but heres an old one. Club Lupus.

a lock-in at the vault

A gang of us converged on the City of London on Friday evening and took refuge in an underground bank vault a few moments along from the Bank of England.

No ordinary vault, we had to pass a roped off security line first and pass through the early evening buzz of a thriving bar. I arrived by taxi, cellphone to ear and headed straight for the front of the line to be waved in, to the consternation of others standing in the long line behind me. But of course I knew the secret word.

Fortunately, the vault itself had been prepared for our arrival and there was a useful bar on hand as well as someone shaking all manner of cocktails. As we chatted together, there was something slightly odd about mixing vodka cocktails in an ex mainstream bank vault in the heart of the City, whilst financial shenanigans were occurring all around us.

Heard any good rumours lately? I have - but I'm afraid they have to stay locked in.

dimeless

Thanks, Pat, for the idea to add this

silver top hat and an old boot

What a difference in a day. More banking sector turmoil almost joining the dots from the last couple of days. Some banks still seem to be sidestepping the problems, whilst others are disappearing in flames.

The US Government has effectively nationalized AIG to stop it from sinking. That means they've put around $300bn into rescuing a variety of financial organizations over the last few weeks. I make that somewhere around $2,400 for every citizen of the USA.

And it looks as if a well known horse logoed bank is about to rescue the ailing singing bank. Based upon a recent friendly lunch between Gordon and some senior bankers, it appears that all of the normal monopoly investigations can be bypassed.

Could there soon be a UK superbank with 1/3 of all UK financial arrangements held within it?

how to short the market

It looks as if the traders are still finding ways to make a turn even during the demise of once famous financial institutions.

It's easy really, borrow something you don't have. Sell the thing you've borrowed. Wait for it to devalue because of the market conditions. Buy it back with the money made when it was sold. Hand it back to the person who loaned it and pocket the difference in value.

Its called shorting, and there's a lot of it about.

It can bring down banks. Or governments.

cardboard boxes up

Good news for cardboard box manufacturers today as more shares plummeted in value because of poor financial decisions. I notice HBOS was off by 22% by close of business.

The latest spirals link to the AIG underwriting of $300bn of ropey bank business but its just after Lehman Brothers declaratiion of bankruptcy and Fanny Mae's earlier splash. The US Government is bemused now too, because whilst they loaned money to bail Fanny and Freddy, by the time they got to Lehman and AIG, the view of what a discounted dollar looked like was getting too hard to understand.

The Bank for International Settlements keeps a track of the amount of derivative based debt which hovers around the $600 trillion level. One of the factors in this counterparty risk based business is that the value of each contract depends on the solvency and ability of participants to honour their obligations. Not a lot of bankers appear to know that judging from recent events.

So AIG's write down of a dollar was to somewhere in the 60cent range and Lehman's was right down to 30 or so cents. Some might call these levels meltdown.

It certainly means that all the opportunistically commissioned missing money first being talked about a few months ago is now collecting into ever larger debt puddles and pools. I suppose we are still mainly talking in billions and haven't really got started on the trillions yet.

immortal pour homme

Up North on Sunday afternoon, to The Angel, Islington and Sadler's Wells to see the Dorian Gray performance. A modern twist on Oscar Wilde's novel with it moved to today and into the world of fashion and art.

An image-obsessed world shimmering with Matthew Bourne’s dark humour, and the addition of a Conan Doyle plotline to the original story. Dorian Gray becomes the latest icon of 21st Century style amongst the glitterati. Promoting fragrance as a model and rising quickly to TV chat show guest.

There's a darkness behind the hedonism and we see the façade fray after the arrival of a doppelganger stalking Dorian's shadows.

Brilliantly staged and choreographed, with hardly a pause in the action, an amazingly strong cast, great lighting, some moments of Matthew Bourne's mischievous humour (the blue rubber gloves, the four poofs and a piano, the nod to dancer Nureyev) alongside the journey towards destruction of the leading character.

Excellent performance - no wonder its sold out.

black box fun

Worth a spin. It certainly took me somewhere interesting!

eNough

I wasn't sure whether to post this here or over on rashbre snapped because its sort of about photography. But I think it's more about eBay, and a little bit daft, so here is probably okay.

The story was that a few days ago I dug out my old film camera, with a view to taking some film pictures. I discovered it was somewhat broken. The mirror had jammed and the viewfinder had some sort of black gunk in it. A Google later and I realized it was going to be expensive to fix. I also noticed in the Google search a few eBay cameras roughly the same, for relatively small money.

It got me thinking that perhaps I could replace the broken camera and even acquire a small number of lenses to augment the two that I already owned.

My criteria was that this had to be an inexpensive project, so I set myself a very low budget. I decided on Olympus because (a) its what I had before (b) its beautiful, well designed precision machinery, (c) its not Nikon or Canon where there are lots of buyers trying to acquire old lenses for their digital equipment and pushing the price up. I regard it as a kind of SLR version of a Leica.

The plan all worked rather well. A few days later, I have everything I could possibly need. A camera with a fine lens was my first acquisition and then a couple of other wide angle lenses. All good. Then a pair of zoom lenses, which happened to have another Olympus camera attached.

Altogether, it was somewhat less than the cost of a modest new digital compact, and I now have a rather fine film kit. In some ways its sad that this type of equipment is viewed by many as obsolete, yet the modern camera makers are only just geting to the same resolution as film and only in their top range £2,000+ cameras.

One thing I can't get over is how small it all looks next to today's DSLRs. Yet, although it has manual focus is mainly mechanical and doesn't need 150 computerised menus, it seems to take some nice snaps already.