If everything in the garden’s lovely, why are we so twitchy?

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If you take their open letter to shareholders at face value, things in the Barclays garden aren't so bad. But that's odd, since all the flower beds in the street are in terrible condition and have been subjected to exactly the same climatic turmoil. Somehow, we're meant to suppose, Barclays found a form of shelter that passed virtually everyone else by.

How Barclays came to find this magical umbrella is a mystery — pure magic, in fact. We're expected to think the bank is better and more conservatively managed than others. Yet how can that be, when BarCap enjoyed the same rampant growth in investment banking as its equally aggressive and now severely wounded competitors?
Apparently, BarCap is so diversified it can weather anything the markets throw at it.

Credit crunch, what credit crunch? So far this year, "customer and client activity levels have been high. As a result, we have had a good start to 2009", it says. You have to pinch yourself while reading this. Barclays is heavily exposed
to the UK and we all know how well that's doing.

If everything is as rosy as the green-fingered chairman and chief executive claim, why is the Government — and not just the market — so twitchy about Barclays?

Its shares rose this morning on the back of the Agius and Varley missive but this was after nine consecutive days of falls, cutting the value of the bank by 72%. The sense is that investors and the market want to imagine they're being totally open and honest, that Barclays is in better shape than its UK rivals.

That's what they're saying so we'd better go along with them. But it doesn't stop us wondering how, exactly, they've pulled off this miracle. Perhaps Agius and Varley should run the country as well. Heavens, we might not be in recession any more.