Well done, Fred the Shred. Even the Americans are holding you responsible for the credit crunch.

Time magazine has conducted a readers' poll to try to decide who are the 25 people most to blame for the financial meltdown. Only one Briton makes the hall of shame - step forward Sir Fred Goodwin of Royal Bank of Scotland, with more than 72,000 votes.

Top of the Time list as most responsible for the crunch is a surprising choice - US Senator Phil Gramm, with 129,000 votes, because of his push for deregulation as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee in the late 1990s.

Others to blame include Alan Greenspan, Lehman's Dick Fuld, Hank Paulson, George Bush and "the American Consumer".

* Traders at RBS's offices in Bishopsgate have been ordered to show up for work tomorrow dressed casually. City Spy has learned that a mass picket has been planned by anti-City demonstrators anxious to vent their spleen on the greedy bankers who they blame for most of the country's woes. Presumably, RBS's management feels the demonstrators will be made up of yobs wearing jeans and T-shirts emblazoned with bash-a-banker. What happens if they show up wearing pinstripe suits?

IT'S official: Lloyds is now a dirty word. Speaking at the Cardiff Business Club this week, BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons said that the BBC must not be allowed to become "the Lloyds Bank of the media world".

"Let's remember the Law of Unintended Consequences," he said, launching into a somewhat climactic tone. "Let's remember what can happen when a strong and successful organisation is used as a convenient piggy bank to bail out a failing one.

"Let's make sure that we don't inadvertently turn the BBC into the Lloyds Bank of the media world."

Trouble in store for pubs

In every cloud, there's a silver lining — so convenience-store heavyweights are dancing on the graves of the Great British pubs, which are closing at a rate of 39 a week.

Nick Ivel, managing director of convenience chain Costcutter, says: “Pubs make great convenience stores because they are right in housing estates or at the end of terraces, often have car parks and are the right size. They are a significant opportunity for us as we look to increase our store estate.”

So don't be surprised if you find yourself haunted by the ghost of an old boozer tapping you on the shoulder to tell you off next time
you go out to pick up a cheap bottle
of plonk.

* How depressing: the AA has offered City Spy the opportunity to buy a “value” caravan insurance policy — covering cheaper caravans and “family owners [who are] thinking of touring to the Cotswolds or the Cairngorms this year, rather than Carcassonne”.

* Surely Nat Rothschild must have a spare £30 million to lend his old Corfu holiday chum Oleg Deripaska to save the oligarch's troubled van-maker LDV...

* City Spy was picked up by a cabbie the other day who said he was having to relearn the Knowledge because he had spent so many years doing corporate work for banks.

For a decade, most of his work consisted of taking bankers and lawyers home from the City and Docklands after working late in the office. His hard-won familiarity with the rest of the capital had got rusty because they only ever wanted to go home to Fulham.

Now that work has dried up and he is back to getting fares on the street, he is having to return to the basics. Apparently, many cabbies are in the same boat...

No fund of goodwill for EMI's Guy

Further to City Spy's story last week about EMI owner Terra Firma facing a banking test next month to ensure it is meeting its loan obligations, three investors have now sold their holdings in one of the private-equity firm's funds, Terra Firma Capital Partners III.
The trio who sold out reportedly received a deeply discounted price because otherwise they faced committing to a further €25 million (£22 million).

Terra Firma boss Guy Hands oversees a string of holdings apart from EMI but the record label, bought at the top of the market in 2007, has been eating up cash. Every six months, Citigroup tests the “covenant-lite” loans that Terra Firma used to buy EMI. Last September, the label needed a £16 million “cure” to keep the business going. We'll find out next month if another “cure” is needed.

Better news, perhaps, in a bold call from Charles Stanley in a bulletin to investors, headed The Bear Phase is Drawing to a Close.Company profits are down, say the chaps at Charles Stanley, but the shares are now worth buying. “The climb out of recession may be long and painful but the current market action does suggest the bear market may have ended but the bull market has yet to begin.” Go on, fill yer boots!

Goldman loses an asset

Suzanne Donohoe is quitting Goldman Sachs in London to move to private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in New York.

The fact that Donohoe resigned as co-head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management is a double blow — her section's revenues almost doubled in the six months to the end of May 2008.

It's also awkward because Goldman has been keen to boost the small number of women in executive positions, and only last summer, she was promoted to become a board director of Goldman Sachs International.

* Poor Michael Grade. What with one thing and another, the ITV boss has enough problems at the ailing broadcaster. But a news story in the City section of The Daily Telegraph on Monday repeatedly referred to him as Sir Michael.

As all journalists know, it's a slip that is easily made — not least because so many other former senior BBC figures have knighthoods and even peerages.

Alas it's still plain old Mr Grade, despite him having being a broadcasting grandee for nigh on two decades.