MICHAEL Howard's call for the Financial Services Authority to investigate the source of Robert Peston's story about confidential talks between banking chiefs, the Chancellor and Bank of England Governor Mervyn King that sparked a plunge in bank shares on Tuesday morning is interesting.
In his quest for how Peston was alerted to what was going on, Howard may want to look at a column penned by his successor as Tory leader in Monday's Financial Times. With hindsight, the piece was astonishingly well-informed, referring to “tomorrow's intervention by the Bank of England to broaden the range of collateral with which banks can access the special liquidity scheme” and how “government injections of capital, with proper safeguards and strict conditions, may be the best way to protect the long-term interests of the taxpayer”.
City Spy understands the David Cameron column provoked fury in Whitehall, not least because he had received a briefing on strict Privy Council terms from the Government as to what was being discussed...

* MEANWHILE the new buzz word for describing the impenetrable reporting of the financial crisis on the TV: Impestonable, as in: “What that bloke has just said is completely impestonable.”

* NEWS that Transport for London is among the bodies that have lost money in Landsbanki is a surprise, not least because TfL's director of marketing and communications is Vernon Everett. His previous job
was head of financial capability at the FSA.

* DOWN at The Wharf all the chat in the wine bars is of the new era of austerity about to land as the fixed-income traders and salesmen discover the joys of working for their new employers. “Forget the Aston, the Porsche, whatever,” one wag was heard to shout, “you guys will soon be civil servants — how uncool is that?”

A blow-out with the bailout

IS City Spy alone in finding something vaguely nauseous about the accounts of the great “Balti bailout”? No sooner was the bank rescue plan launched than the Government spin machine flicked into action.
The deal was thrashed out, apparently, over a curry takeaway ordered by Alistair Darling for his officials and advisers from Gandhi's in Kennington. The Chancellor, we are told in The Guardian, “personally phoned to order £245 worth of rice, karahi lamb, tandoori chicken, vegetable curry and aloo gobi”.
Added The Independent: “Sitting in his office on the second floor of the Treasury, the Chancellor tucked into his tandoori chicken. But Government hospitality did not extend to the negotiators from eight banks and building societies sitting in a nearby room, who had to survive on Treasury tea and biscuits instead.” Ah, the humiliation of it all.

* ONE bank that is crowing over having “a good war” is HSBC. At the talks the other night, Sir Fred Goodwin, John Varley and the rest were irked to be joined, not by Mike Geoghegan, their opposite number at HSBC but a junior executive. Please God, will the humiliation never end?

Frosty reception for Bentley

IN his autobiography, Michael Parkinson recalls his time as one of the Famous Five founders of the ill-fated TV-am, led by Sir David Frost.
Part of the “rigmarole” of winning the breakfast television franchise was to tour the country meeting community groups.
“One story suggested that the Famous Five were spending lavishly on first-class rail fares to places like Darlington,” writes Parky. “David had decided he would set the example and travelled second class, an exemplary sacrifice.
“However, he forgot to cancel the Bentley he had ordered to meet him at our destination.
“I shall treasure the memory of David walking briskly down the platform being shadowed
all the way by his limousine and attempting to shoo it away with muttered instructions to bugger off'.”

RBS really is in a hostile climate now

AS if they don't have enough on their plates at the moment, Royal Bank of Scotland staff now face the wrath of climate-change activists on the university milk round.
The RBS stall at today's graduate fair at Olympia is being singled out for particular attention. Says the call to arms: “Want to get involved in taking action to hold banks responsible for funding the fossil fuel expansion which will push our planet over a tipping point into runaway climate change? RBS will be recruiting at graduate recruitment fairs in London over the coming weeks — and we want people to know what they're really signing up for!”
An RBS insider is unmoved: “If having some eggs thrown at us and being shouted at by eco-warriors means we're still actually recruiting people to RBS in a few weeks' time, then I for one will consider that a small price to pay.”

* AN equity traders' verdict on the stock market's roller-coaster ride : “I'd just like to be able to get away from my desk long enough to go to the toilet.”

* New York's National Debt Clock can no longer record the spiralling US borrowing figures. The clock, at 43rd and the Avenue of the Americas, was put up by property developer Seymour Durst in 1989 when the national debt stood at $2.7 trillion. Now it has gone over $10 trillion, and they're having to replace the dollar sign with the “1” of $10 trillion. Durst wants to replace the clock with a new version. At the rate the US government is going, it will need to be quite a lot bigger.

* BEAR Stearns may be no more, but the recently filed accounts of London-based Bear Stearns International make for interesting reading. In the year to November 2007 (just four months before the business was taken over by JPMorgan), BSI's profits fell from £92 million to £78 million. Yet at the same time, staff numbers grew 13.4% to 1297. And remuneration was up 25.7% at £210 million. Is there a lesson here?