There are no children in The City. It’s a bit weird, like the scourge of some terrific nursery rhyme kidnapper. There are lots of majestic people though, well groomed, well heeled and well busy. Too busy even for each other, if the dating agency adverts on the tube are to be believed, majesty is clearly a lonely state. It’s nice to be here for a bit though, standing in a pool of cold sunshine surrounded by vainglorious architecture, macs flapping, heels tapping, stockings swishing by.
All around me money, including my inheritance, is flowing out of taps, swirling down plugholes and gurgling off into reservoirs to be picked up and pumped around, like it’s been for hundreds of years. Markets have been operating on this ground for a very long time and this is one of the capitals of capital where money leaves its mark, like a million hands burnishing a banister. The stones sweat it and it collects in sanctuary like piles of dead leaves in windless corners.
There’s a lot of it about but it’s not for everyone, as we’ve touched on before, money begets money in ways that make the small piles we set aside for a rainy day look a bit silly. But it’s not there for the taking unless you make it your life’s work, your sole occupation.
The City is majestic but also quite sinister and I decide to walk to New Court, where the Rothschild dynasty has built the first new building on this site for a hundred years. I did a condition survey here, the one with the glass box on top of it. God only knows what goals and outcomes are set up there in that shark tank (see photo). I bet they have dinner parties with naked servants pouring Château Lynch-Bages in rivulets down bare buffed thighs. Liver-tongued money men lapping at their feet in an orgy of self abasement – I’ve been bad, I’ve been so very bad, oh thank you (slurp), thank you.
I have to shake myself out of this dark and unsubstantiated reverie, even though it’s really hard not to imagine that whatever they’re up to up there, it ain’t for the benefit of you and me. Financial services are supposed to deliver huge benefits to our economy but these are not charitable institutions, let’s face it, and it sits awkwardly with me to have any stock market investments at all. Before I started out on this road, before I inherited a little money, I knew nothing about the machinations of the markets and it’s been an education just getting involved. That's my excuse for it, but once you're involved it can be hard to get out.
One of the weirdest things has been watching the government basically ruining things for me, in a direct and laughably cack-handed way. First of all the green energy company I invested in, which relied on the Warm Front programme, saw this initiative cancelled to save money. Bear in mind the government were and still are intending to cut CO2 emissions, rhetorically anyway, so quite how shelving insulation upgrades to existing housing stock underpinned the green agenda was anybody’s guess. The company's share price halved overnight.Next came the extra-ordinary tax on British oil producers. I went to fossil fuels after seeing the commitment to the green agenda first hand, only to see the share price of my small UK-based oil company slide gracefully downwards.
The property company I invested in happened to own a number of government contracts which were slashed. I can hardly blame them for trying to economise on this one but I did begin to wonder if they were ever going to do anything for me.
Then, and you couldn’t make this up, Snacktime, my little ringer, the vending machine company that my next door neighbour worked for, who convinced me they were loved by the city and currently undervalued, well, what did the buffoons have in store for these guys?
“We’ve got to save more money, Dave,” say George Osbourne and Danny Alexander, one afternoon after a long lunch at No. 10.
“Okay, I know!” says David Cameron, “why don’t we make money cheaper?”
“Oh God...how does that help us?” burps Danny, frowning at the lamb fat on his breath.
“Well, what are coins made of – copper? zinc?”
“Er, nickel, actually.” snorts George.
“That’s my point, nickels are expensive, that’s why my iPhone cost so much (snigger), as if I had to pay for it. So, why don’t we make money out of, say, pots and pans, like they did in the war?
“They didn’t," says George. "They made planes out of pots and pans, allegedly, but point taken.” He settles his Cognac on the mantelpiece. “Steel’s having a rough ride at the moment, over-production for China, who are throttling back, has resulted in a surplus...”
“Well then, it’s settled, there’s enough duff money floating about anyway, let’s start making it out of steel and sell our nickels to Apple, or Orange, or some other friendly fruits. Now I’ve got to get cracking, the Rothschilds are having a do tonight and it’s the hottest ticket in town...”
Now, Old Pete tells me that, metallurgically, steel isn’t quite as heavy as the current money mix so the new coins will have to be fatter to carry the same weight, so that bags of them can still be weighed accurately in banks and so forth. But what does this mean for vending machine operators...well, try an immediate 10 percent off the share price of Snacktime. Brilliant, thanks Dave & Co., can you please stop meddling, you're like a bunch of bloody school kids.
Jane says our glorious leader has only ever had one job in the real world, out of politics, and his girlfriend’s dad got him that one, so he and his Tory mates are, in effect, really like a bunch of schoolkids. I begin to understand and have real sympathy with entrepreneurs and captains of industry. If they get tripped up as often as I've been it's no wonder the put so much effort into lobbying. You just can't leave these guys to their own devices.
