Adam Posen, who joins the monetary policy committee at the Bank of England in September, admits he is not yet up to speed on the state of the UK economy and promises to put this right.

“My starting place is to re-read all the MPC minutes, Inflation Reports, Governors' press conferences and so on from the last several years,” he says. Since most of the MPC spectacularly failed to spot the recession — most notably Posen's direct predecessor Tim Besley, who called for rates to rise — Posen will probably end up chuckling a good deal. Well, he is an economist.

* Posen will certainly add some spice to monthly MPC meetings if his debut in front of the Commons Treasury Select Committee is anything to go by. Asked by MPs if money pumped into the economy through the Bank's quantitative easing would be withdrawn any time soon, the outspoken US academic replied: “There is not a chance in hell of that happening.”

E&Y's £1.6m windfall from BA

CITY fees continue to get up the noses of shareholders. Investors want to know why British Airways (it is difficult keeping them out of the news) paid £1.6 million last year to its auditor Ernst & Young for “services relating to corporate finance transactions”. It transpires this was for E&Y's bean-counters to do “due diligence” — that is, take a look at the books — on Iberia, BA's putative Spanish merger partner. £1.6 million to read the accounts of a listed company whose finances are a matter of record? How many number-crunchers did E&Y put on the job? Or was it just a couple with stratospheric charge-out rates?

BA's audit committee chairman Alison Reed (the ousted former finance director of Standard Life) defended the payment of the fees on the basis that she had won a 5% discount on the audit fee from Ernst & Young. Which firm wouldn't cut its audit fee by £100,000 to win other work worth £1.6 million?

* PADDY Power has rather unpleasantly started running a book on who might succeed should BA chief executive Willie Walsh head for the departure lounge. The bookie's board includes the usual suspects, with Walsh's egg-head director of strategy Robert Boyle heading the betting at 2/1 while finance director Keith Williams is 9/4. City Spy is happy to lay either of those all day but is intrigued by the 4/1 price about Unilever finance director Jim Lawrence. As it happens Lawrence, an American, already sits on the board of BA as a non-executive director. He used to be a senior executive at North West Airlines. He is still only 56. Could he be the man chairman Martin Broughton turns to as the BA crisis worsens?

* BA is in hot water (there's a change) over revelations that its directors are still getting free flights while some staff are working for the ailing airline for free in July. Does that mean that, as Jim Lawrence jets around in his very international day job for Unilever, that Unilever doesn't pay a penny for his flights?

* Does City Spy detect the hand of Patience Wheatcroft, who started this week as European editor of the Wall Street Journal? There's already an improvement in the leaders, with a call to end the French ban on retailers opening on Sundays, complete with a sprinkling of “jamais”, “pourquoi” and “au contraire”. Wheatcroft knows about shopping — as co-founder of Retail Week magazine.

Goldman the vampire squid faces sea of criticism

Rolling Stone's fabulous description of Goldman Sachs as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” — is taking off. Practically every UK paper used the phrase when they reported the Wall Street giant's second-quarter results, which may have caused some irritation at its

Fleet Street HQ in London. Even the FT's normally staid Lex column couldn't resist it, opening its analysis thus: “Slurp — the great vampire squid strikes again!”

Goldman is getting a kicking from another unexpected quarter — the editorial column of the Wall Street Journal, which says the bank “enjoys the best of both worlds: outsize profits for its traders and shareholders and a taxpayer backstop should anything go wrong”.

The WSJ continues: “We like profits as much as the next capitalist. But when those profits are supported by government guarantees or insured deposits, taxpayers have a special interest in how the companies conduct their business.” Quite.

* A screeching U-turn in White City. Here's BBC director-general Mark Thompson, responding yesterday in the Financial Times to Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw's complaint that the Beeb has poor leadership: “Does the BBC relish the idea of having a straightforward and very visible argument with government: no, not at all.

A strong working relationship where disagreements are worked out behind closed doors is obviously what we prefer.” And, here's the DG on Radio 4 on 24 June: “I believe that the risk in the end to the independence and the ability of the BBC to deliver its services to the public is so great that in my view there are no circumstances in which I think top-slicing would be a good idea. There is a suspicion that for some years now there has been a small group of people who have been ideologically focused more on the principle of getting a wedge into the licence fee.”

* Good luck to all those competing in tonight's Standard Chartered Great City Race around the Square Mile in aid of the Seeing Is Believing charity. Competitors include the bank's chief financial officer, who will be blindfolded, and a quartet from the Evening Standard. The race begins close to Old Street roundabout at 7.15pm for those who want to cheer them along.

* Sign of the times: cheap fashion retailer New Look is taking on five stores that have been put up for sale by Luke Johnson's struggling bookseller Borders, including its flagship on Oxford Street.