Article by John Lanchester in the Financial Times

Even as a successful writer John Lanchester is familiar with the precariousness of the freelancing lifestyle

Letter to the Bank #44

Dear Banks,
It has been a while! So much has happened since we last spoke I hardly know where to begin. You have thoroughly recovered from your nasty, nasty cold, bonuses are pouring in, and corporations are now allowed to make political donations once more without being overly concerned about conflict of interest! After all anyone who accepts your donations is more or less saying they will do your bidding. No conflict there! You should consider this though, and I offer it up in the spirit of uncompromised friendship: intelligent, inquiring, thoughtful voters might think twice about voting for politicians who are in the pockets of big banks, business or corporations. Just to put a flea in your ear. That said how about compromising me?

I was thinking I could exhibit my artwork in the hallowed halls of your institutions. What do you think? There is so much wall space in Wall Street, there is so much square footage upon which to hang artwork even in your local High Street branch. I would be asking for, insisting on, carte blanche, something you guys do all the time so I am confident you'd understand. I'd be the curator, my qualifications? Taste. Not to offend but it is clear from your general over regard for bling, love of big boats, furry coats and so on, that taste is in short supply amongst your colleagues. Sure there is plenty of blue chip art, some of it drop dead gorgeous, hanging on the walls of the man (rarely woman) caves of your CEOs, but what, I ask, is so exciting about staring at blue chips all the time? This is an extension of staring at piles of money. Andy Warhol had it right when he painted dollar bills, had your number, called you on it, and made a bundle, and now has your respect as well. What a coup!

Let me know what you think. If you are going to worry about what your clients may think I'd consider using the space of a bank that has already gone belly up and approaching whoever has the keys.

Yours possibly not but sort of ever so sincerely,

K. W.

The Bouncy Bankers

"Do you hear that pop-pop-popping sound off in the distance?

The good news is, it ain't gunfire. The bad news is, it's corporate lobbyists and their Republican lapdogs popping champagne corks and dancing on what's left of the Constitution.

They're celebrating the Supreme Court's decision to allow giant corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to target any member of Congress who dares cross them."

—Paul Begala, DCCC

Everyone Is Angry but Nobody is Contrite

WASHINGTON — Summoned to Capitol Hill to explain their companies’ roles in the worst economic downturn since the Depression, leaders of four big Wall Street banks offered a largely clinical take on the financial crisis on Wednesday, pointing to lapses in risk management and government regulation but offering little sense of the turmoil’s human toll. See

Voices That Dominate Wall Street Take a Meeker Tone on Capitol Hill

in The New York Times

The Not So Bouncy Banker Watches Aghast as People Walk Away from their Debt Obligations

In today/tomorrow's Sunday New York Times magazine I was delighted to come across an article that pointed up the fact that bankers play around with morals the same way they muck around with financial instruments. They tell everyone how they must be financially responsible, pay their mortgages, pay their debts, debts, they argue that are ultimately debts to society. If you walk out on your obligations we all suffer. If you abandon your home we are all stuck with the soon deteriorating property. All well and good but these days many folks are walking away from their obligations with very little left to show for lifetimes of work at pay that rarely kept pace with the cost of living as the renumerations toward the financial sector skyrocketted, went stratospheric. As one watched banks walked away from payments on office buildings as their values plunged. Are they not required to honor their debts? So it does look as if a lot more people will be walking out on their obligations and not with their tails between their legs but with their heads held high in grim determination not to be left a sucker holding the bone the banks proffered in the first place. Don't think I delight in this. It is sad that we are in this place where it is impossible to respect or trust the very people who were supposed to help us all handle our finances responsibly because they were the experts. For an earlier article on the same issue by the same author, Roger Lowenstein, go to "Just Walk Away".

The Fifth Humor- The Scruplic

Occasionally there are are news items and/or articles that may even give the Bouncy Banker pause for thought. Thought is something all bouncy bankers might work on, might meditate on, like a koan. Thinking and, come to think of it, feeling, are both much neglected as koans in the financial world. These both require scruples, the fifth and mostly forgotten humor, the other four being: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine. Bankers lack the fifth humor. They lack good humor so need to put work in to the other four departments as well. They have plenty of bad humor, guffaws, smarmy smirks and so forth, but I believe there could be an all round improvement in their behavior if only they would concentrate on the fifth humor as defined by me, that is to say the scruplic. I may be the first to ever have employed this word as I am the inventor of the fifth humor.

For article that might exercise the fifth humor in bankers see next post, the Not So Bouncy Banker.

What do Big Banks and the leader of Senegal have in common?

They both have massive egos and get bail outs from the US government! In the case of Senegal this is to shore them up as allies but surely we (the American taxpayer does after all hold the debt-just like they own the banks) could insist on better taste? A huge Korean built statue is nearing completion that expresses, in no uncertain terms, the arrogance, power drunkness, and insensitivity of President Abdoulaye Wade who has spent, according to the Guardian, around 17 million quid (roughly 35 million dollars-remember I am a fuzzy mathematician). There is a huge ego at play here if nothing else. He insists the statue represents progress, a climbing in to the light out of the dark ages and so forth but it shows a massive disregard for a huge part of the population that is Muslim (94%) and who finds the statue in every way offensive. I might usually try to defend any artwork if the argument against it were merely fear of causing offense but in this case the US government is giving money to a government that is an ally in the so called War against Terrorism that is offending its mostly Muslim population and using American tax dollars to do so. None of this seems very helpful AND the art is retrograde. Hard to come up with any argument in its favor. Lets at least cut their next year's budget by the cost of the statue or insist on more oversight so that such monies go to help educate and feed the poor-then they can go out and make better art to counter the official art of the day.

Of course a similar power assumption afflicts the Big Banks who simply cannot understand why everyone is so upset by their enormous bonuses. They need the money. They have mouths to feed, and houses galore to fix. Apparently curtailing their financial needs is not a job the current government is up to. See "What's a Banker Really Worth?" in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.