What must it be like being Hank Paulson? One minute you're the head of Goldman Sachs, surrounded by some of the smartest people on the planet, and the next...you're trying
to explain the economic crisis to George Bush.
When he was at Goldman, the future US Treasury Secretary made no secret of his admiration of Bush, praising him for the war on Iraq,
for example.

But not now, surely. Paulson has also come to realise that it is the low esteem in which Bush is held in Washington and in the country at large that has made his own job so difficult.

Bush telling them about the gravity of this situation has familiar echoes of previous addresses on the war on terror, Iraq and weapons of mass destruction — and look where they got America.

As he sits across the table from Bush in the White House, Paulson could be forgiven for letting his mind wander back to his former job...

* “Due to technical issues, our online shopping is temporarily unavailable,” says the website of furnishings group Roseby. Er, what technical issues are they? Only that the company went bust on Friday.

* Britain's standoffishness when it comes to Europe never fails to baffle Europe. At a tourism ceremony in Bordeaux to celebrate the winners of the EU's European Destinations of Excellence (EDEN) awards, it was noted that Britain did not even have an entry.

“It's surprising and disappointing that the UK is not taking part,” said Pedro Ortún, the director of the EU's Directorate General for Enterprise. Apparently, the UK Government found the award process too complicated — “but 20 or so other European countries seem to cope all right”. Of course, it could just be that with our wonderful weather, we don't feel the need to promote
our tourist trade…

Russians who caught a cold

If you think some of London and New York's bankers have suffered in the crisis, what about the Russian oligarchs?
Together, they are reckoned to be nursing paper losses of, gulp, $42 billion (£23 billion) from the plunge in the Russian stock market. Forbes magazine claims that Vladimir Lisin, the steel magnate owner of Novolipetsk Steel, has seen his portfolio drop by a mere $11.2 billion since the end of July.

Next biggest loser is the chairman of Uralkali, the fertiliser company, Dmitry Rybolovlev. He stacked up market losses of a piffling $7.3 billion. Vagit Alekperov, president and one of the biggest shareholders in oil major Lukoil, has seen $5.13 billion come off his net worth of $14.3 billion.

Alexei Mordashov, chairman of steel giant Severstal, has shed $4.49 billion from his net worth of $24.5 billion over the past two months while Arsenal football club shareholder Alisher Usmanov has lost just $1.25 billion of his $9.5 billion fortune.

* Frank Gallagher from C4's Shameless has got nothing on the subprime bankers. Stan O'Neal, the first big victim of the credit crunch and who has latterly seen his old bank Merrill Lynch have to be rescued, is set to take a new job...with a hedge fund called Vision Capital.

Keep your hair on, Tim...

Calling Tim Martin, calling Tim Martin. In your Wetherspoon newsletter and on your company website, you attack the press — fair enough — but then you go on to call City Spy your “favourite luno” for quoting you as saying your pubs were “a good place to get pissed cheaply” and claiming that the reason your beer is cheap is because it is “getting pretty close to its drink-by date”.

Now Tim, City Spy has been right back through the cuttings and they weren't said here. Versions of the first appeared in the Daily Telegraph and The Independent, but not City Spy. The second was in The Standard, but said: “He set up the business on canny buying of the beer that brewers could not sell. Some people even claim it was getting pretty close to its drink-by date.”

Again, it was not City Spy. Tim, what's going on? Have you been on the sauce yourself? Is the mullet really a triffid that's eating your brain?

Texan who's new king of the castle at Sunderland

The new owner at Sunderland FC is not just best-known for being a wanted man in South Korea for
much of the past five years after his attempts to buy Korea Exchange Bank.

Ellis Short, 47, the Texan who runs Lone Star Funds and is Sunderland's biggest shareholder after a rights issue, is master of Skibo Castle in Scotland. He bought the spread from Peter de Savary in 2003, and it's where Madonna married Guy Ritchie.

Short's wife ingratiated herself with locals recently by threatening to shoot the dogs of a couple of local walkers who she (wrongly) accused of trespassing.

* Could the reason the water companies have been seen as such a good investment be down to the ease with which they routinely outfox the regulator?

Operating profits from the nation's water suppliers were up 5% last year as their soaring revenues from rising bills were not matched by their own spending on maintenance.

In a review of the industry, Ofwat admits that the water firms have been able to raise debt on much better terms than the regulator had estimated when setting bill increases between
2004 and 2009.

Worse, the companies have also spent 9% less over the past three years than they promised they would. Negotiations have just opened on where water bills will go from 2010 to 2015. Hmmm. Expect the companies to win another five years of
25%-plus increases.

* Last week's alert from National Grid of potential electricity shortages this winter is, like it is every year, the first harbinger of autumn. Still, it didn't stop some papers screaming that this winter will be like 1974, when factories went on a three-day week by candlelight. That's not true. We had factories
in 1974...

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