A further addition to the plethora of savage anti-Goldman Sachs articles in America — quite possibly the best of the bunch — comes from US writer Michael Lewis on Bloomberg.com.

The tone of his satire is set in the first line: “From the moment I left Yale and started working for Goldman Sachs, I've felt uneasy interacting with those who don't.”

What follows is a spoof dissection from within the bank of how it views itself. “America stands at a crossroads and Goldman owns both of them,” Lewis says before going on to take issue with the recent description in Rolling Stone of Goldman being “a great vampire squid wrapped round the face of humanity”.

“For starters,” he says, “the vampire squid doesn't feed on human flesh.

“Ergo, no vampire squid would ever wrap itself around the face of humanity, except by accident. And nothing that happens at Goldman Sachs — nothing Goldman Sachs thinks, nothing it feels, nothing that it does — ever happens by accident.”

It's a fairy-tale trip for Grimm

NOT many young, thrusting City management consultants would give up their jobs to go to help a cheese-making collective in rural China, but Corpra whizz-kid David Grimm is.

Despite having one of those City rarities these days — a relatively safe job — Grimm is moving to remote Yangqu village in Shanxi province, 300 miles west of Beijing next month to join China's only gouda and cheddar cheese-making operation. It's a far cry from his normal array of flowcharts and Powerpoint demonstrations restating the obvious in management-speak, but the ebullient Grimm is upbeat about the change. “It's a lovely myth Chinese people don't do cheese,” he says. “It's seen as a western luxury product and the Chinese people like trying luxury western products.” His boss, Paul Winter, says: “I always said he'd be a big cheese one day.”

* Deutsche Bank chief economist Norbert Walter, is on a mission. On the Deustche Bank Research website he asks “Where Is God?” Answer: “In church! In prayer! In the holy service. At the pinnacle of the pathway to heaven: the litany! In choral singing! God waits for us to accept his bounty. We are invited to his wedding banquet. He stands by us forever and ever with his uncompromising love.”

City Spy wonders if Walter isn't undergoing some personal torment as he writes: “Sometimes we cannot help feeling that even the chemistry of sexual attraction is on the wane.”

Walter wishes we would step into church more often. “God is waiting for us. We are invited.” Once we have put our faith in God, “perhaps it will become easier to live in harmony again — and maybe the faithfulness of God our Lord will become a model for faithfulness between people. Maybe we will find peace because we rest in God. We are the sunshine and assurance to others, so let us pass on what we have received from God to our families and friends, our colleagues, clients and our communities.”

Thank you so much Norbert, that's most helpful. By the way, how is German GDP holding up? What can we expect from the Euro in the coming months? Norbert can your mate, God, shed any light on those?

* A father walks into a restaurant with his young son. He gives the boy three 10p coins to play with to keep him occupied. Suddenly, the boy starts choking and going blue in the face. The father realises he's swallowed the coins and begins slapping him on the back.

The boy coughs up two of the coins but is still choking. The father is panicking, shouting for help. A well-dressed, attractive, and serious-looking woman in a business suit is sitting reading a newspaper and sipping a cup of coffee.

At the sound of the commotion, she looks up, puts her coffee cup down, neatly folds the newspaper, places it on the counter, gets up from her seat and makes her way — unhurried — across the restaurant. Reaching the boy, the woman carefully pulls down his pants; takes hold of the boy's testicles and starts to squeeze and twist, gently at first and then ever so firmly, tighter and tighter. After a few seconds, the boy convulses violently and coughs up the last 10p, which the woman deftly catches in her free hand. Releasing the boy, the woman hands the coin to the father and walks back to her seat without saying a word. The father thanks her, saying, “I've never seen anybody do anything like that before, it was fantastic. Are you a doctor?” “No,” she replies. “I'm with the Inland Revenue.”

* “I'VE usually done four or five jobs by now, but you're my first,” a taxi driver tells City Spy at 5.30am. “Business is dead. It's not picking up. All the City boys have gone.”

* NOW there's a surprise. Josef Ackermann, head of the giant Deutsche Bank, pens an article in the FT: “Smaller banks will not make us safer.”

The name's Bond, if M&S is listening

FOR some months now, the jungle drums have been beating with the name of Andy Bond as one of those who could land the job of Marks & Spencer chief executive. Indeed City Spy heard the Asda boss was weighing up going for the Marks & Spencer post against the prospect of a further promotion within Wal-Mart, Asda's parent. So his decision to break cover with an interview in which he dwells on the M&S job is intriguing. It suggests he has made up his mind. At no point does he rule himself out of the M&S running, quite the reverse. “I would imagine there would be a very short list and I would imagine I would be qualified to do the job.” He claims not to have been contacted about M&S. That is hard to believe but, if true, it doesn't matter: this is Bond making contact himself, very publicly.