Credit Crunch in London

Call me cruel if you want, but yesterday me and a friend, before the Metallica concert (see previous post) went to Canary Wharf, to Lehman Brothers building, in order to see if any broker was living with all his stuff in a cardboard box. I know it is not a funny thing (mainly for the one who losses its job), but watching wasted yuppies queuing, some of them crying, some of them in shock, that was quite a picture.

Indeed, I don't know if people back in Spain realizes how big this thing is. Yesterday 5.000 Lehman guys were virtually sacked just in London, Merril Lynch (what the fuck... Merril Lynch mate!) was saved at the last moment, and who knows about AIG... people are even starting to talk about Goldman Sachs, wether its assets and securities situation is much better-off than all the others one... and tax-payers are funding former overwhelming risks (see Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or Bearn Stearn in the States, and Northern Rock in the UK): capitalism on its worse and most unnaceptable version. Or like my friend disier says, the new trend in 'neoconomics': corporate losses nationalization.

All those Lehman guys had all their bonus (the biggest chunk in their income) paid in equity that is completely worthless now. FT is talking about 100,000 employement cuts in the medium term just in London. Those guys have no real chances to get a new equivalent job in the short term. A quite bizarre image were people waiting in line in Starbucks to hand their cv to some recruiting consultants who where just waiting there... we are talking about 2,000 pounds designer suits wearing guys.

Maybe here in London a particle accelerator was not needed to create a black hole.

But let's be optimistic. There is still beer in the pubs :D.