Base instincts kept at bay
As I jostled the respectable blonde next to me in order to move forward in the EasyJet queue at Rhodes Airport, the equivalent in August of a circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, I could quite see myself throwing bricks at a store front in the midst of the London riots in order to walk off with some loot. It would have been the Etro store on Bond street rather than Footlocker and its Nike trainers. Still, the veneer of civilisation in all of us is barely skin deep.
How the mighty are fallen! Not only Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF head who allegedly sexually assaulted a chambermaid, or former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his Tunisian counterpart Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
There are a host of others: one of the world’s foremost Israeli football agents, a household-name UK broadcaster, plus a number of European chairmen. Last week they were all at the infamous Mayr Clinic, whose mission it is to clean out its residents’ guts to restore them to health and energy via a quasi-liquid fasting cure. One would imagine the conversation would range from the FIFA scandal to Greek debt restructuring.
Banking tales from Colorado
As I cast my line into the deep pool, amid the blazing sunshine in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the gillie reassured this amateur fisherwoman that the trout were “stupid” at this time of year due to the spawning season. Rather like rutting deer in the fall, he added. Or like board members who allow themselves to be distracted by new mistresses in the midst of company crises.
Choosing the right person for the job is crucial.
With key FSA powers now being incorporated into the Bank of England, questions are being raised about the stance of the ever more powerful Mervyn King, an academic economist. The Governor of the Bank of England does not believe it is a good thing to have multibillion dollar banks headquartered in the UK due to the bail-out cost in troubled times.