Oh, Stop The Baracking

Well, I'll have to put aside my discussions on investment briefly, as there has been an interesting development at the bank.

By good fortune, one of the junior team members has just decided to quit. The reason is being kept secret for now, but he was a veritable Lothario despite ears that stick out like dinner plates, and there are rumours he has been sleeping with the personal assistant of a particularly senior MD in synthetics. If that got found out then it was never going to go down well - particularly if the MD was also getting some on the side.

What was more interesting however is how this fits into the impending job cuts here - our Boss announced his departure rather cryptically this morning; that is was his own decision (yeah, right), and mentioning his leaving date was still to be confirmed "pending some negotiations".

From talking to the chap in question who is leaving, this is all about when he can hand over his work, which sounds reasonable enough on the surface. However our Boss is a sly old fox, and is more likely to be delaying the whole process so that our boy counts nicely in the round of cut backs next month. A splendid idea, and at the same time the Boss can avoid making any of those nasty decisions that reduce team morale.

Otherwise I have a couple of sources dotted around in the Bank, one of whom works for global security. They are very useful to know, because as a group they need to be informed in advance when we're about to fire people so they can be ready for the odd disgruntled former banker who might come storming back into the office to vent their views on life, the universe and anti-Capitalism. Global Security's usual tactics these days has therefore been to simply lock the doors on the day of the cull - unfortunately we all know that game now so it is also taken as a sign that something is afoot.

Apart from confirming my suspicions that a cull is on its way "within a month", he also confessed his team had even gone to the length of locking the office doors periodically on other days recently, to try and make it seem more of a usual event! It sounds like they haven't got enough to do if they're wasting time with antics like that, and a few of them should join the exit queue.

Otherwise my highlight news of the day was waking up to find that the new, incoming President, Barack Obama, is taking the time to make sure we bankers are lined up as the sole fall guys for the global economic crisis. In an age of irresponsibility, there is no doubt that the City and Wall Street ought to be hung out to dry. But so too should the governments that steadily reduced the regulatory framework for years to the point where all this was possible. To use a zoological comparison, if the government is an animal keeper and the City a tiger, it's like putting the tiger in an enclosure next to some lambs, with only a low, wooden fence between them. And then blaming the tiger the next day when you get in to find a blood bath (but a fat, happy cat).

And while we're on the subject of personal responsibility, let's have a moment to think of Average Man On The Street and his stupidity in spending far beyond his means for years by borrowing against the value of his house.

In reality, Barack's barracking is a response to 'Bonusgate' - the scandal currently engulfing Bank of America / Merrill Lynch, in which former Merrills CEO John Thain opted to pay his people a fat bonus before the inevitable bad times engulfed the firm. Thain's head rolled quickly enough this month, although BoA made a poor job of trying to stitch him up by pretending they had no knowledge or influence over the decision.

In reality that is a load of rubbish, as Thain made clear in public interviews that could not be convincingly denied by Bank of America. As such we ought to see Ken Lewis (CEO of BoA) on his way soon as well. It's entirely fair given the amount of public money being used to keep the combined bank afloat, and is probably the first signs that the compensation culture of global banking is changing forever.

Meantime for a man who spent his campaign talking about rising above finger-pointing and blame, and focusing on resolving the problems, the President seems to still have had a spare moment to give a mid-digit to Wall Street for all the problems they are going to cause him for the next couple of years. Fair enough.