Is there anything more pathetic than Gordon Brown's trip to America? First, he has one of his meaningless-but-very-important-looking breakfast discussions with business leaders in New York, including George Soros, the man who famously bet against the pound. Then he has to beg George Bush to make time in his diary to see him. This is the same Bush who so lacks authority he has so far been unable to drive through his Treasury Secretary's rescue plan. Brown of course wanted to meet Hank Paulson but the Treasury Secretary was too busy to see him. Meanwhile, he believes his ban on short-selling in financial companies has made a vital contribution. It hasn't — witness Bradford & Bingley — and is why Paulson is tied up.

* Our great leader takes to the airwaves to explain the evils of “naked short-selling” whereby, according to the PM, institutions lend stock to hedge funds who sell them, in the hope they will fall, and then buy them back later. No, that's normal short-selling Gordon, not naked short-selling, which is when hedge funds sell stock they have not borrowed.Worried? We should be...

Branson rues his lottery luck

Sir Richard Branson's new book, Business Stripped Bare, is the usual mix of score-settling, mischief, veil-drawing and cringe-inducing personal detail you wish you didn't know.
He still cannot understand why he failed to land the UK national lottery licence on not once but twice. He has a go at the authorities for handing the draw to Camelot, which has proceeded to make profits ever since. As usual with Branson, it's what he doesn't say. His own consortium did not plan to make a profit but we're not told what its expenses would have been.

* “I tried hard to convince Thabo Mbeki and the president not to make the same mistake that was made in the UK. But it seems that, in the end, they also fell into the same trap as the UK and granted the licence to a commercial management company, Uthingo Management.”

Bless. But for Branson not to name-check someone in a book stuffed with name-checks is odd — so who is “the president” to whom he dismissively refers? Only his “close friend” Nelson Mandela. The Virgin tycoon admires Mandela or “Madiba”, as he is affectionately known in South Africa and as Branson calls him repeatedly in his book.
Madiba brought him the chance to buy South Africa's Health and Racquets chain of health clubs when they collapsed; Madiba persuaded him to purchase the Ulusaba game reserve; and Madiba agreed to head the Elders, Branson's group of world figures who put their heads together to try to save the world.

But he didn't get him the lottery, and for that he's not Madiba.

* Some people are just so petty. While Branson is busy doing good works, what does Camelot do? Only hold a corporate party at Madame Tussauds and go and put his waxwork model in the broom cupboard for the evening. They didn't? They did! “Actually, I think my effigy took one look at the company it was keeping, and walked,” says Branson, still trying to come to terms with the humiliation.

Time for a Fuld-scale search

Where's Dick Fuld? His secretary still answers the phone outside his office on the 31st floor at Lehman's Seventh Avenue offices, presumably soon to be Bob Diamond's new playroom.

But nobody answers the bell at his compound in Greenwich, Connecticut. In the absence of facts, here are the rumours: he was in the Lehman gym last Sunday, only to get punched in the face by a former colleague.

Another rumour, according to the hereisthecity website, claims he was nearly run over crossing the road outside his office, while yet another has him having a panic attack and being stretchered out of the building...

* Will the great bank merger happen? Well, HBOS shares are trading at a 12% discount to Lloyds TSB's offer, suggesting there is a reasonable chance it won't. And HBOS has broken with tradition of not using outside financial PR advisers and hired Brunswick. Clearly, chief executive Andy Hornby might be upset at the bad press he's been getting but it's still a pretty strange thing to do — to retain a PR in what is supposed to be an agreed deal.

Archbishop short on the facts

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has accused the City's short-sellers of being just “bank robbers” and “asset strippers” operating in an “Alice in Wonderland” market place.

His speech to the Worshipful Company of International Bankers at its annual dinner the other night complained that the value of a bank is no longer dependent on the strength of its performance, but rather on the willingness of the Government to bail it out.

Hmmm. Dr John, short-sellers are many things, but they're not asset-strippers. Now private equity, that's different. Hang on, what's this? “We are looking to invest more in private equity...” — the most recent annual report of the Church Commissioners.

* And Dr John, didn't the Church of England do a spot of asset-stripping itself once, during the Reformation?

* So Warren Buffett says the US must act or “face an economic Pearl Harbor”. An unfortunate choice of words as an increasingly weakened Wall Street turns to Japanese banks for assistance. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan's largest bank, is acquiring up to 20% of Morgan Stanley; Nomura is buying parts of Lehman; and Sumitomo Mitsui has been linked with Goldman Sachs. Other deals involving Japan's institutions are mooted.

* Or perhaps Buffett chose his words deliberately. That would be the Pearl Harbor where defenceless symbols of American power were taken out one by one by Japanese bombers...

* Hilarious scenes at Sir Richard Branson's Babylon Restaurant and Roof Gardens in Kensington, where staff are vainly trying to scare off a heron that has removed 13 of 15 koi carp from its the ponds. Said one employee: “It should be killed but English Heritage will not allow us to shoot it.”

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