It’s possible to get a reservation again at Scott’s. The City boys have well and truly left the building, and can now be found drowning their sorrows elsewhere, in dark corners of the West End and Chelsea, as far away from the prying eyes of the City as possible. ‘“Reduce your risk. Sell. Get flat.” But all I could think about was the school fees and the new kitchen, and how there’s just no recovering from this.’ I was looking into the pained eyes of a former master of the universe, who had until recently stared the credit crunch in the face and laughed. He was now on his sixth (house) whisky and mumbling incoherently about getting buried by Wachovia earlier that day. As he staggered off down the Kings Road, his departing words were simply ‘stupid Yanks’.
Stupidity aside, we have at least learnt this week that it is unwise to ask US Congressmen and women to vote on anything significant, or look at the wider implications of their decisions five weeks before they face re-election. They will be thinking of one thing and one thing only: what is popular with the voters. The Bush administration’s $700 billion rescue package to save Wall Street was unsurprisingly deemed unpopular last Monday among both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats within the House of Representatives, who were far too concerned with trying to keep their jobs to worry about an ensuing global economic crisis or heed the incumbent President’s warning, in an unprecedented moment of lucidity, that ‘if money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down’.
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, even left the vote open in a last desperate effort to convince 12 ‘no’ voters to change their minds and pass the legislation.
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