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Goodbye to the days of wine and roses

Posted on November 2nd, 2009 in Londonpubs Canary Wharf, HBOS

In the pubs of the City and Canary Wharf and the champagne does not run but the draft beer. The Ferraris and Lamborghinis gathering dust behind the windows of dealers, now that billionaires and bonuses do not fall like manna from heaven. The upscale restaurants miss the business dinners with wine bottles thousand pounds. The party’s over, at least for now …

Almost every week the news spread that a bank fired two thousand, five hundred an insurer, a department store to those required. The employees of investment firms with Christian resignation accept (or religion, whatever), the end of the risk is the very nature of their work, and is supposed to have been saving for rainy day. But administrators, designers and dependents of Marks and Spencer, to cite one example, are considered very unfair that they who pay the duck bubble burst.

At the gates of the Bank of England and the Reuters news agency environment is not as apocalyptic as in Wall Street, despite the most pessimistic forecast to disappear two million jobs before going back to the crisis. “There was talk that London would rob New York the world capital of finance, but events of recent weeks have shown that there yet remains larger. The good, the bad …”, and says Remy Christiansen, an analyst at a Swiss bank.

While the Bush administration down to Lehman Brothers dejóaba (according to some analysts the catastrophic failure of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson), the Brown government nationalized Northern Rock and the toxic assets of Bradford and Bingley, and orchestrated the purchase of HBOS by Lloyd’s, limiting and the impact of the crisis to the aftershocks of the American holocaust (the special relationship between America and Britain is not only politically but also finenciera, and banks in this country is saturated with subprime mortgages). Ed even after Obama’s arrival to power, the instinct to go to the state in search of solutions remains infinitely stronger in Europe. Not to mention in Ireland, whose government has assured two years all deposits at six domestic banks, to the chagrin of London and those who see the measure an attack on the rules of free competition.

The average housing price in Britain has fallen twenty-five percent and ten percent of the offices of the City is not fully rented housing slump that was the lifeblood of the British economy. “You can greatly impact the fall of Lehman and Bear Stearns rothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the nationalization of AIG … Suddenly there is no demand, it is as if he had declared an epidemic of plague, and the city had remained empty …”, laments Peter Trinder, head of central London real estate NB Real Estate. In the 2.6 square kilómteros the City of London is 350,000, of which sixty percent in finance, and other support services and other businesses, many without the now much-criticized fabulous salaries. They are the immediate victims of the great financial earthquake, but not unique (some newspapers and news agencies cut templates in light of falling advertising, department stores fire workers to the extent that lower sales, so many restaurants do not need waiters …). In the afternoon we meet in the pub, but do not ask Krug champagne but a pint (or two) of Carling. And instead of commenting on holiday in St Moritz or the Harley Davidson motorcycle purchased with the bonus, talk about the miseries of his firm or the fear of being on the street. The days of wine and roses are over.