A short window on life in the USA

It’s a little strange to be sitting on the ‘wrong’ side of the Atlantic at a time of more political (and economic, for that matter) uncertainty in the UK than we have experienced since the early 1970s.  Added to that there is an additional frisson of uncertainty related to that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano: flying here last Friday the plane took an apparently meandering route, setting out due south to Spain and then as if by way of afterthought turning north and eventually west across the Atlantic.  Hopefully the ash was avoided.

The media in the US seems to have little or no interest in what’s happening across the pond.  So we’re relying on the net to stay as up-to-date as we can – which is sometimes challenging, as the BBC website seems either to be paralysed by its own uncertainty or exhausted by the effort of tracking the negotiations to form a government; at times I’m less than convinced that we’re seeing the most accurate reports of change.

To be fair to the US chattering classes, both the Washington Post and the New York Times are carrying stories from the UK; but both newspapers then quickly retreat into what is charmingly called ‘Metro News’ here – which means the mundanities of who’s been shooting whom and where the traffic accidents have occurred.  And that’s the staple of journalism for most of the US, which makes it difficult to feel there’s anything worth fighting to save in print-based media over here.

There is however interest in the financial roller-coaster that occurred in the markets on Friday (as we dodged the volcanic ash); I guess the Americans are fascinated by the ‘bankruptcy’ of Greece and its implications for PIGS or PIIGS; perhaps they welcome the comparison with life here, where the road construction signs proclaim that the government is ‘getting America back to work’…..and hopefully solving the deficit problem at the same time.  Nobody mention the deficit.

Where I have been drafting this blog has been a suitable reflection of what life – at least for the non-disenfranchised – is like in the US.  I started in the waiting-room of a commercial blood testing centre, where my mother-in-law was having routine blood tests.  We then moved on to one of the many huge shopping malls, where I bailed out of the hard work and went to the Borders bookstore; a large – and now, unlike thirty years ago, reasonable black coffee – gives me unlimited internet access and therefore supports the essential housekeeping that the cyber world demands of us wherever we are.  There are also some great books to browse.

Oh, and I have road-tested the Apple iPad.  It undoubtedly is the future – at least for the Mac faithful.

Archie, weight and restaurant eating

A surprise over the last couple of days has been to be told by two people – one in South London and the other in Paris – that they really wanted to hear more about Archie in this blog.  As an early entry (1 April) spoke fulsomely of Archie I am now wondering whether all subsequent subjects have been less than scintillating.

The absence of hard news of Archie in truth reflects rather fewer Thursday night gatherings in the pub than I would have wished.  For the indirect explanation of this see my other blog.

I have however been in touch with Archie as he occasionally drops by at the house after a walk in the local park.  I can say that Archie is in good form even if struggling a little with his diet and weight.  But then Archie is very old and such challenges are to be expected; he has earned the right to over-indulge and put his paws up.

I have high hopes of seeing Archie on Thursday of the coming week; that happens to be the day of our General Election in Britain.  I hope Archie makes it to the pub, to fortify himself for what could be a late night for him once back home, as all stay up to watch the results come through.

Here now is a carefully selected picture of Archie:

I am writing this after a couple of days in Paris.  It was here that many years ago during a business lunch in quite a smart restaurant I witnessed a dog being seated at the table (not my table) and fed from his own plate.  At this stage I probably need to make my position clear, lest the chattering classes that read blogs put it about that I am on the lunatic fringe of dog lovers. Absolutely not.  Dogs have a place that should be far from the food I am consuming.  Archie may benefit from something of an honourable exception to this; but he does not share plates with us at the pub and the crisps he enjoys so much are served on the floor; or rather, scattered on the floor.

Come to think of it, those crisps might have something to do with his weight issues.

Cricket and beer

Careful followers of my occasional tweets will know that last Sunday afternoon I was watching cricket.  The game meandered along although there were moments of excitement – as there certainly should have been, since the format was the one-day, 40 over game.  I misread the likely result (hence my unhelpful tweet).

I was seated on a grassy bank – seated that is to say in a white plastic chair of the sort that gets churned out (extruded?) in the billions, costs a farthing and probably pollutes the planet for the rest of time.  The chair was provided; I did not buy it.  A little to the front of me was a walkway to allow the spectators to move between seating blocks (so many dreadful plastic chairs).

Cricket needs distraction unless the batting and bowling (and indeed the fielding) is exceptional.  Sunday offered plenty of distraction, most of it walking just in front of me.  I was reminded of the ‘perp walk’ – that uniquely American practice of parading white collar would-be felons in front of the media and their cameras, as the suspects are moved in and out of the courtroom by a proud District Attorney.  Actually the DA is not proud as such – just standing for re-election.

So what did the perp walk offer at last Sunday’s cricket?  Sartorial disasters for sure; challenged bellies; and a definite outbreak of ‘moobs’.  The latter were perhaps not unrelated to the challenged bellies – geographically and genetically linked.

Of course there is a common denominator to all this.  Watching cricket requires a commitment of many hours and even days (and no, there isn’t always a result).  People approach it in their own preferred ways.  Newspapers are read, texts, emails and phone calls tended to, sudukos tackled and often discarded, parts of the body exposed to the sun with a determination that ill suits our pale skins……  But beer plays a key role.  So on Sunday it was being shuttled carefully from bar to nasty plastic chair.  Carried tenderly by the most unlikely people.

Old habits should die hard

When I was at university I settled comfortably into a habit of writing the essays (which I was required to read to the tutor) in the early hours of the morning…of the day in which I was due to have the tutorial….that morning…often at 9 o’clock.

Later in life I am reminded of my younger self as I struggle with a speech I am invited to give in front of a committee of the European Parliament.  Now this is not my usual habitat but the opportunity has arisen – and readers of my other blog will know that the underlying issue has been a preoccupation of mine for some while now.

I have been limited to seven and a half minutes; I stress the precision of that as a fellow speaker and I have been allocated a total of 15 minutes and I suspect my European colleague will be disciplined in his approach to the allocation of time.  I have a deadline to release the speech of midday tomorrow.  To the despair of those around me I have been crafting and re-crafting my draft for the last week and I am still working on it.  There is of course only so much that can be said in the time available, although to be fair to myself that is part of the problem.  I have calculated that if I am sufficiently self-disciplined to speak slowly so that the Anglophones understand and the simultaneous interpreters become my friends, I should work to a target of 200 words a minute.

I realise now that I should never have begun the drafting when I did.  It has consumed far too much time.  I should have settled down later tonight and been ready by the morning.  Old habits should indeed die hard.

Too much happening for a blog entry

I was wondering whether I had hit the marathon runner’s ‘wall’ in terms of blogging.  Would that I could bask indirectly in the glory of the implied huge effort and the much-deserved break..…but the reality is more prosaic.  There’s been too much happening.  I vowed at the outset that my blog would not be a diary, so the easy option – just to record how truly hectic life has been and how my multitasking has kept record numbers of balls in the air – is not there.

Nurturing two blogs is a further challenge, although my work-life (EACT) blog has been better tended than has this one for reasons that would be obvious….if I shared the detail of my diary with you.  But I won’t.

So this is a holding entry.  I will be back – maybe even later today if I can get through everything that’s in my diary (secret).

New blog site: EACT Chairman!

In order to separate work from pleasure (or something akin to that) I am now posting ‘professional’ blogs at http://eactchairman.wordpress.com.  This will I hope separate sheep from goats….although one of the former may occasionally stray into the other’s patch.  If that happens I ask for your forebearance and even sometimes your enthusiasm.

The challenge of a plural existence

Plurality is not some obscure and possibly deviant practice; in my case at least it amounts to an often challenging multi-tasking in which I am constantly aware of balls being dropped and deadlines looming too large.  There are elements in the plurality that are ‘just for me’ and this past week (….but I am determinedly not writing a diary….) saw some of the more pleasurable aspects come to the fore.

As a member of Surrey County Cricket Club I had to attend the annual general meeting at the club’s ground, the Oval.  Some of my fellow members – who all seem ancient but are probably younger than me – were there to challenge the future direction of the club’s cricket, which is what our membership should be all about.  Others were there to complain about the members’ catering arrangements – they are right to complain – and still others were perhaps there for the tea beforehand and the alcohol afterwards (the Rioja was far better than anything I have paid money for at the Oval).  Not much emerged other than an impressive opening appearance by the club’s new captain, Rory Hamilton-Brown, who at 22 is said to be younger than any of the players he will be leading.

I was, quite exceptionally, at the Royal Opera House for four days out of a run of five during last week.  There were treats aplenty, including La Fille Mal Gardée, a Masterclass with Gary Avis and Bennet Gartside, Il Turco in Italia and a ‘final rehearsal’ of Cinderella.  Standout for me was Yuhui Choe, dancing in both La Fille and in Cinderella: charming, graceful and technically very confident.

Some may have been wondering about Archie.  I could not go the pub this past week – Il Turco stood in my way – but Archie may have gone; I shall try to find out.  If he did, crisps will certainly have been eaten.

I have many failings……

Of which excessive modesty is clearly one.

I ‘volunteered’ to go to our local supermarket this morning (which is Sainsburys on Dog Kennel Hill – the name sadly over-promises the exoticness of the location).  On a Friday morning my fellow shoppers were the young and surely harassed mothers, resting actors and confused retirees.

Chocolate is a failing of a mine.  Some reading this may appreciate the compelling attraction of Sainsburys selling Cadbury Mini Eggs at 25% of their pre-Easter price.  The seasonal and market economy rules!

So I bought far too many and will have to consider the use of a secret cache or worse.  I am certainly going to be chastised for my failing(s).

European Commission reveals its thinking……

This blog entry is not for those who prefer to learn more about Archie and his evenings in the pub.  I will return to that….

My preoccupation with the European Commission (EC) and its thinking on the regulation of OTC derivatives ratcheted up a gear dramatically today.  The EC seems to be inching towards acceptance that there must be an exemption for corporates – thereby preserving the ability of most if not all to go about their business of mitigating risk without having to cash collateralise.

It is now clear that the EC is struggling with the basis for such an exemption but seems to accept that it would be foolhardy to do so on the basis of accounting treatment (yesterday’s blog….).  The EC is talking about ‘thresholds of intervention’ and whilst some of the largest corporates may fear this, my own view is that such an approach could be workable.  It has the huge attraction of requiring the regulators to be proactive in their monitoring – not a bad thing, you might feel, given how many were asleep on their watch in the run-up to the financial crisis.

An EC internal document that seems to be widely available today everywhere other than on their own website contains some thinking that looks – at least on first reading – to be fuzzy in its use of data and in the understanding of the role that derivatives play for corporates (not for liquidity but rather for risk mitigation).  However on first reading I welcome its overall direction.  There is cursory reference to the elephant in the room that still remains – the pressure on Basel / the BIS to raise punitive capital requirements on bilateral OTC transactions – but we know that battle still has to be fought.

Who believes accounting should drive regulation?

In all the furore about the move to regulate OTC derivatives – an initiative gifted to us by G20 politicians on the rebound from the failure of the financial system – there have been some nuggets of commonsense and some frankly worrying arguments.

Most of the bad ‘arguments’ (if they can be so dignified) have in my view been the result of political grandstanding: were politicians ever presented with such an unimpeachable gift of a target as the woeful – yes, I mean it – financial system?  A rational and not political argument – but one I strongly disagree with – has been floated that says that corporate end-users of OTC derivatives should get their exemption from the scope of the regulations…..but this should be based on whether or not the derivative being used qualifies for hedge accounting treatment in the hands of the corporate.

Now I don’t consider this passes as commonsense.  There are numerous and very valid reasons why a corporate going about its business of risk mitigation may not achieve hedge accounting for a particular business risk and its OTC derivative.  Just for starters, international accounting standards in this area were built on the crumbling sand of US accounting rules.  There is a major effort underway to achieve international convergence and to do so on a stronger foundation.  So, currently less than glorious accounting principles…..

But the real flaw here is to suggest that accounting standards offer a serious platform for global regulation.  The challenge in achieving the latter is great (and one that I personally support so long as the politicians are put back in their boxes); but the civil servants in Brussels and Washington need to tackle the flaws in their current proposals from the bottom up rather than setting out to steal a crutch from the IASB as a quick fix to the need to isolate corporate end-users from the seriously adverse consequences of the early drafting.  More anon on those adverse consequences.