CITY AND SUBURBAN
Kenneth Clarke and I run up against Lee's Law: You can't parody modern life
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
My headmaster, Desmond Lee, main- tained that you could not parody modern life. However far-fetched your invention was, however wildly you exaggerated, events would always keep a step ahead of you. I have been trying to disprove his the- ory ever since, but I must now admit he was right. This last month has flattened me. I could not have invented Barings, or the Lit- tlechild of Birmingham — as their regula- tor, the last man to notice that the electrici- ty companies were stuffed with money or the wear and tear on the Governor's car- pet. As for a ruling party with all the symp- toms of paranoid schizophrenia, it seems to be living in an airport novel, and I can only assume that some other parodist is trying to confute Sir Desmond. (Can it be Lord Archer?) He won't, though. Kenneth Clarke has been in and out of the story- line, most recently because the blame, which gets passed round and round like a parcel, got passed to him. This was a twist in the plot, because his was the part of the story-line that was thought to be working. Now Home Counties Tories who can't tell Northampton from Nottingham complain that he doesn't know Consett from Redcar. Europhobes distrust him as a closet Europhile, though he has never struck me as a closet anything. Worst of all, he says that the lovely warm feeling we seem to be missing may not arrive in the life of this parliament, or even in this century — and he says this right out loud, where everyone can hear. The Chancellor blinks and retorts that our exports are looking rather good. For the first time in a decade, our balance of payments may run into surplus. Enjoy, enjoy! Didn't Harold Macmillan say that exporting is fun? Unfortunately, it isn't.
Nothing but the best
THE FUN comes from imports. A country that enjoys prosperity — Victorian Britain, for instance — treats itself to the best from all over the world: caviar from the Caspian, pearls from the Indies, Havana cigars and the finest Peruvian guano. Sending good things abroad for others to enjoy is much less fun. (Victorian Britain imported more goods than it exported, and made up the difference from merchanting, services, and investment income, much as we do or try to do today.) We have become accustomed to import-led booms — the shops full of goods and customers, carried along on a flood tide of money, which has swept up the price of houses and made their owners feel perfectly splendid, until the reckoning comes. One reason why our exports are booming now is that world trade is boom- ing. That, says Peter Warburton at Robert Fleming, is the closest thing in economics to a free lunch, which is to say: not as close as it looks. Two years ago, governments and companies rode a flood tide of money in the bond markets — companies to finance investment and trade, governments to put off their days of reckoning. The tide has now gone out and the world trade boom, says Mr Warburton, will go out with it. Mr Clarke must hope that we enjoy it while it lasts.
Maison des chiens
CHAMPIONS de France (suite): after Credit Lyonnais, Alcatel Alsthom, where chairman Pierre Suard is in the doghouse. He blames banal embezzlement somewhere down the line, but it was tactless of him to suggest that charging (or overcharging) high prices to the state was one way for companies like his to pay for the research that made them champions. At Bull, Jean Descarpentries has turned in another loss, together with another profit forecast. The prospect of privatisation, he says, leaves him unconcerned. I bet.
The plumber's mate
EXPERIENCE and guile are good quali- ties in a Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, so I am glad that Brian Quinn is covering the job until a permanent appoint- ment can be made. This time, there will be less of a hurry. Last time, Eddie George was advanced from Deputy to Governor and told of his promotion on a Thursday. Ministers then took the view that the new Deputy would have to be appointed, and both appointments announced, on the Fri- day — for fear of a leak. Pressure of time was their excuse for not consulting or informing the directors of the Bank. Terri- ble chaps, those Bank directors, or so min- isters must think: fellows like Cadbury, Jeremy Morse, Chris Hogg — never trust them with a secret. . . It would have been an offhand way to choose a plumber's mate, let alone to fill the second most high- ly paid position in the public service. We can now see that the Downing Street plumbers went looking for leaks in the wrong places. As for the Bank, it will adjust to losing Rupert Pennant-Rea. The process was evoked by Lytton Strachey, in his account of John Henry Newman's leaving Oxford for the Church of Rome: 'The Uni- versity breathed such a sigh of relief as usu- ally follows the difficult explosion of a hard piece of matter from a living organism.'
Don't send the chauffeur
SIR TERENCE Conran's City clientele looked up from their nosebags last week to see the former Deputy Governor lunching with his headhunter. His ideas of a discreet venue remain idiosyncratic. I asked a head- hunter to the commercial nobility and gen- try what he would propose for Mr Pennant- Rea to do next. Nothing, he says. This can- didate would simply not get on his short lists: for all his merits, he would fail on the `Who needs it?' factor. To my code of con- duct for bankers, my headhunter adds a tenth rule: don't send your chauffeur — go in a taxi. For myself, I wish him better luck and even better lunches.
Each way treble I AM impressed by the practical approach of the Government of Western Australia, home state of Alan Bond and other sport- ing and dramatic figures in the world of finance. They must come within the remit of the Hon. Max Evans, MBE, FCA, MLC. As his official card proclaims, he is the Minister for Finance, Racing and Gaming. I can't think how our own dear Treasury has got along without one. He could intro- duce a shade of odds — say, 6 to 4 against — into the official forecasts. Or he could simply take the budget deficit to Chel- tenham and put it on a horse.
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