I was meant to go to a private view of some perfect-looking flower photographs by Vogue creative director Robin Derrick on Tuesday night. Bogged down in collapsing banks, banks shares, nationalisations and bankruptcies, I never made it. So I asked a friend who had managed to escape the trauma-ridden office of his private-equity fund to down a few glasses of someone else's champagne what it was like. His answer? "Full of gorgeous women."
The gallery putting on the show, Lamberty, sells exquisite things to rich people (if you have piles of extra cash, forget Damien Hirst and visit the Pimlico and Battersea showrooms now).But on Tuesday most of these one-time customers were either still at work in the City or St James, or, had they been employed by Lehman Brothers, nursing hangovers in the over-designed open-plan living spaces of their heavily mortgaged homes. So only their well-dressed wives, who presumably were getting desperate for free drink by this point, could make it.
On page 18 Simon Nixon says we shouldn't judge the banking community too harshly for what is happening to financial markets and, by extension, the global economy. When I suggested that he do his column this week on how people might feel about bankers, this wasn't quite the opinion I had in mind. Sure, ex-Lehman employees will suffer. And sure, I feel bad for the junior and administrative staff at the bottom of the heap. But as for the top lot, they've spent the last decade helping to build up one of the greatest credit bubbles of all time. In doing so, they created the conditions for it to collapse and take down with it many of the things that mean the most to ordinary people: the price of their houses, the perceived security of their savings and, perhaps, their jobs.
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The bankers have been very well paid for this. The rest of the nation has not. So it isn't really them that we should feel sorry for they've only themselves to blame if they failed to put their bonuses away for a rainy day. It's the nannies they'll be firing. It is everyone the credit collapse has left in negative equity. It is all the small businesses who can't raise finance to keep going. And this week, at least, it is the exhausted phone staff at Northern Rock who are all working hours of overtime taking deposits from those of us too nervous to keep their money in non-government-backed banks (me included).
Still, there's some good news about for first-time homebuyers. Eighteen months ago I interviewed someone for Tonight with Trevor McDonald. She had overextended herself and had her house repossessed. Her explanation? "If you want a house you have to borrow a lot of money. You can't buy a house for £20,000 anymore." That was then. Now you can. Guide prices for the next auction from Mustbesold.com suggest £20,000 will buy you a flat in Margate. Welcome back sanity.
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