So it's goodbye to Henry "Super Hank" Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs banker, who sadly failed to live up to his nickname in his efforts to save the US from recession and banking failure this year. Paulson's Goldman connections have been much commented upon - he relied on a coterie of advisers of whom many were Goldman alumni. Now who is set to be the éminence grise of the Obama administration?

Step forward Robert Rubin, a senior director of Citigroup since 1999 and Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary before that.

Three of Obama's top economic appointments are Rubin protégés: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council chief Larry Summers (Rubin's successor at Treasury in the Clinton era), and budget director Peter Orszag. Even the Obama administration's headhunters have links to Rubin - they include his son James and Michael Froman, who had previously worked for Rubin Senior at both the Treasury and Citigroup.

Given the current plight of Citi, it's no wonder that some in Washington are raising eyebrows. Still, it suggests that the Obama team may look kindly on Citi as it survives on government bailout money...

* MFI, which has just gone into administration, has always had an unfortunate reputation. Comedians Smith and Jones used to joke more than 20 years ago that MFI stood for "Made For Idiots".

Jobs doom for Wharf banks

Anxious days at Canary Wharf. While there has been plenty of chat about mass redundancies, they haven't really happened yet. All that is expected to change next week and the week after. The rumour is the banks will want to make their cuts before the end of the year.

Heading the list is thought to be Citigroup with a 33% cull, with others also preparing large lay-offs.

* The silver lining to the banking crisis. Fallen US giant Wachovia is set to be taken over by Wells-Fargo. That means the Wachovia chairman and the best part of a dozen fellow executives are in line to collect $98 million, mainly in severance payments. As Portfolio magazines notes drily: "In return, the men would leave Wachovia, having led it to a staggering $23.9 billion loss in the third quarter and driven down its share price by 90% over the last two years."

Mrs Spitzer is bouncing back

Eliot Spitzer, the Guv Who Paid For Love, is still sitting around at home, having resigned from his post of New York Governor after being caught by the Feds in a prostitution scandal.

Luckily for him, his wife has not only stood by him, but has just landed a big-paying Wall Street job. Silda Wall Spitzer has just started work for Metropolitan Capital Advisors, a Manhattan hedge fund, where she is recruiting investors. The boss of Metropolitan is married to one of Eliot's old chums, so it's all very cosy. City Spy doesn't expect she'll be tapping all Eliot's old contacts though - his favourite hooker Ashley Dupre, for example, may not get a call.

Meanwhile, Eliot is thinking about writing a book about America's financial crisis and his term in office.

* Questor, City Spy is watching you. The new Questor stockpicker for the Daily Telegraph is Garry White, a sometime geneticist and Standard & Poor's inmate whose last job was blogging on the online Daily Reckoning, picking stocks in the oil and commodities business. Needless to say, Questor's new "manifesto", as revealed over several inches in the Daily Telegraph, revolves around picking stocks in the, er, oil and commodities business. Should readers do what he says? In pieces earlier this year for the Daily Reckoning, the then soon-to-be-new Questor editor was a strong bull of the oil price staying above $100, intitially opining that it was the weak dollar that was driving the cost of crude but then later converting to the "something more fundamental is going on" camp, declaring: "Cheap oil really has gone forever..."

Best to take the beer googles off, Lord Bilimoria

Lord Bilimoria is looking to raise £200 million from the sale of Cobra beer via NM Rothschild. City Spy, wonders, though, if the good lord and his advisers aren't guilty of downing too many beers themselves.

Only a few months ago, Diageo, which knows a thing or two about alcohol brands and their worth, walked away from taking a minority stake, in a deal that would have valued Cobra at nearly £100 million.

The business was founded 18 years ago by Bilimoria and has become an established brand in Indian restaurants. But it's yet to make a profit. Curry houses account for around 40% of turnover. However, the scope for expansion there must be limited. Bilimoria has been pushing Cobra into pubs and supermarkets but overall lager sales are declining and it faces stiff competition from other "world" beers. He's targeting India but demand for beer there is unproven.

To City Spy's eye, the Diageo assessment was much nearer the mark.

French have got some cheek

Even our former European Commissioner, Lord Patten, has got fed up with the French. The leading Europhile says their opposition to globalisation is hypocritical. "French business - public utility companies, aerospace firms, luxury-goods manufacturers, retailers - are globally very successful," he says. "Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy owns New Zealand's Cloudy Bay wine. How that's for respect for terroir?

"Carrefour comes second only to Wal-Mart as a mass market retailer. France is the third-largest recipient of foreign direct investment in Europe and McDonald's is one of the biggest foreign employers, counts its French operation as one of the most profitable of any of the 120 countries in which it works, and is more popular in France than in any other country in Europe."

* The US media's favourite source for comment on the housing market is one David Lereah of the US National Association of Realtors. This is the same David Lereah who wrote a 2005 book called: Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust and How You Can Profit From It.

* The recent publicity given to people having "virtual" affairs over the internet using imaginary fantasy personalities, prompted an old City hand to ruminate: "Sounds like my membership of Lloyd's... put up virtually no money with a bunch of people with virtually no brains and got virtually wiped out..."