Fridays P&L: GBP-230.00

Fridays Booze: 1 bottle of decent Rioja, 4 Large vodka martinis, 6 pints of Stella Artois

Well after a brief brush with madness on the drinking front, I am returning to normal. At least as normal as I get. Haven't slept in a couple of days and am not coping well with the cold temperatures. Still, I have to put things in perspective. Lots of people have it worse than I do, but all us drunks love wallowing in self-pity. Giving me the opportunity to suffer is like giving a blank expenses claim to an MP. Talking of which why is Tony B suddenly coming out and admitting he would have supported the war on Iraq no matter what. Jesus, If George W had told him to jump off a cliff would he have? Do you think Blair still gets Christmas cards from George Bush Junior and if so does he get all excited and ask Cherie if his friend can come over for a sleepover? Ol' Cherie probably puts a stern face on and says "no way, every time you boys play together someone gets hurt".

Politics is a dirty business, makes me wonder why I didn't pay more attention before. Still banking takes some beating in the sleaze stakes. Its almost as if the last year didn't happen. Goldman Sachs are embarrassed by the bonuses they have to pay out and the trickle-down effect to the other banks is apparent. People are sitting aroung gladhanding themselves, telling each other what good traders they are for their triple digit returns. For those who don't know it works like this. When a bank makes provisions for a loss, either from its own capital or through a government bail-out. the asset price of the loss is written to as close to zero as possible and the loss booked against future tax payments. The dodgy position is either maintained on the books of the bank or sold to some greedy cash rich investor. For example after the Russian default in ninety eight Goldman Sachs phoned around the banks that they knew had very big positions and offered to buy all of their Russian books at less than ten cents in the dollar. If you keep the assets on the book and there is a recovery, as there almost always is you are effectively making a profit on anything above the write-down price. So if you wrote down your position in RBS to five cents in the dollar and the current market price is fifteen cents in the dollar you have made a two
hundred percent profit and really should feel that you deserve a big bonus for that. Bankers as a rule are reluctant to price assets they own when they are falling but cannot price them quickly enough when they are rising in value.