C Bellini © fintag

News comments:
So there I was at C. Cipriani to those who aren't lawyers, sipping on a Bellini with my many girlfriends. Such places as this are so far away from the boarded up houses in Liverpool, the starving in Ethopia and the mugged in South Africa, it feels like being in heaven.

The discussion was not about US failing to gain EU equivalence status and being ranked a second rate third country; or China cheating with its peanut currency; or the cheapness of BP or whether Obama dyes his hair; no chuckles about the uselessness of SocGen's risk management function; no gasps in horror at DB's shorting of its own motherland currency; no whispers at how much Goldman has bunged the SEC to make it go away; alas the talk was about how to avoid being seen as an easy mugging target by the soon to swell unemployed ranks and if Harrods new revamped mans department was any good or not.

Places like C are wombs of the selfish and over privileged. Which is nice as its warm and banal and helps cover up lifes complexity and irritation.


Today's shorts:
DB Middle Fingers Merkel (telegraph)
USA Unemployed Unamused (bloomberg)
Small Boys And Crooked Traders (hitc)

Today's longs:
Goldman Versus SEC Stalemate (reuters)
USA is not equal and never will be: fight, fight, fight (hedgefundsweek)
Cheap BP Beep Beep (bbc)
China Decides Never To Import Anything (telegraph)
Soros 2.0 (dealbook)

Gossip:
Malta will be the new Cayman by 2014.