Thanks to Flickr user Oliver Ingrouille

Prepare to heave at this New York Times screed on how tough life is for bankers these days.

“Nobody in the investment banking world is expecting pity, or even a sympathetic ear, these days,” the article begins, before quoting banker after banker who not only feels  ”unfairly singled out“, but wants destitute home owners to accept the lion’s share of the blame:

Financiers tell their not-for-attribution account of the mortgage crisis like this: Americans undersaved and overspent for decades, relying on rising property values to bankroll their lifestyles.

But nobody on Wall Street forced United States homeowners to take out loans on houses they couldn’t afford, or refinance mortgages to spend money on cars they shouldn’t have bought.

Of course, others are at fault too. Ratings agencies failed to warn innocent financiers of the risks they were taking, while regulators… well, they should be ashamed of their many failings. Bankers did just one thing wrong. They trusted us too much – and we let them down.

Now they are spat on as they cross the sidewalk from their limousines and are too embarrassed to admit what they do at champagne receptions. “I’d almost rather say I’m a pornographer,” says one poor soul. “At least that’s a business that people understand.”

Then there’s the last devasting blow – having their bonuses cut:

“Fact is that this is a terrible way to make a living — except for the money,” Ken Miller, a former vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston and now a private investor, said. “The lifestyle is terrible — the hours, the sucking up. These guys must feel like they’re the victims of a capricious god.”

Yes indeed, Ken, it seems they do.

Q. What is the capital of Iceland?

A. About two krona.

Shouldn’t laugh, I know, given that we’re next. 

H/t The Economist.

The vast potential of social networking technologies to aggregate people and effects is something that we’ve been interested in for a while now here at Global Dashboard.  In the blue corner: Linux, Wikipedia, anti-FARC protests organised over Facebook.  In the red corner: insurgents in Mumbai using Twitter to help them to co-ordinate their attacks.

Well, the last two days have brought another couple of examples.  As David noted yesterday, one of them is the current spate of wildcat strikes in the UK, where strikers have been using bulletin board sites like BearFacts and informal text messaging networks.

The other was to be found yesterday on Twitter.  As the strikes gathered pace and as heavy snowfall brought much of the UK’s transport system to a standstill, one Twitter user whose updates I subscribe to posted this:

I can confirm that the Co-Op in Forest Hill is out of stock of Heinz Tomato soup #uksnow #blitz #panicbuying

Now, if you’re not familiar with Twitter, then you won’t be aware that the practice of putting ‘#’ in front of a key word is designed to help users to search rapidly for all tweets related to the same topic. So during the Mumbai attacks, for example, you could immediately gather all tweets on the subject simply by searching on #Mumbai.

Image Author: Flickr user ~Molz~

What was interesting to me about this particular tweet was the fact that it was the first on the subject.  The user who made the post was not commenting on an existing subject of chatter on Twitter, nor merely observing that tinned soup was moving fast at his local supermarket, but intentionally turning his observation into a new meme designed to spread infectiously.

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In an interview with the FT yesterday, Wen Jiabao sets out China’s negotiating position in the run up to the Copenhagen climate negotiation. Three main points:

• Green stimulus as part of the response to the financial meltdown.
• Domestic action to increase energy intensity by 4% a year (“We failed to meet the targets in the first two years of the five year period, and we succeeded in meeting the target in 2008.”)
• No quantified emissions targets for China – the country is still at an early stage of development and “in terms of per capita greenhouse gas emissions, we are certainly not the biggest one.”

How strong is China’s position? Not very, I think. China is obviously right to expect the rich world to do more, but if they accept tough targets and China refuses to, then there are two consequences. 450ppm stabilization becomes impossible – and it’s the rest of the G77 that will end up with a highly inequitable deal.

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UN officials always describe their nightmare scenario as “another Srebrenica”: peacekeepers standing by as civilians are massacred.  Their dream scenario is, of course, for the presence of blue helmets to ward off violence.  Last year’s fighting in the DRC came dangerously close to the nightmare: thinly-spread UN troops remained on their bases as thousands of civilians were forced to flight.  But there were no large-scale massacres (none that made the media anyway), so the UN survived to peacekeep another day.  Now there’s news of a courageous stand by the UN in Darfur:

Peacekeepers have refused to leave a rebel-held town in Darfur, despite warnings from the Sudanese government that an attack is imminent. About 5,000 civilians took shelter at the UN-African Union base after the government said the army was preparing to take Muhajiriya from rebels. A spokesperson for the peacekeeping force – called Unamid – said they would not leave civilians unprotected.

Mediators are talking to both sides to try to prevent more fighting.

The rebel Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) seized Muhajiriya two weeks ago, sparking fierce fighting, including air strikes.

“We are not going to leave while there are thousands of displaced people around our camp,” Unamid spokesman Noureddine Mezni told Reuters news agency. “The Sudanese government should be aware that their actions are endangering civilians and Unamid.”

On Sunday, Khartoum had warned peacekeepers to leave the town. “We are not ordering them around, we are asking them,” said Akuei Bona Malwal, Sudan’s ambassador to the African Union. “It’s sort of like informing them: ‘Something will be happening here,’” the AP news agency reports him as saying.

Meanwhile, Tahir al-Feki, of the Jem rebels, said they were expecting “a large attack.”

“They [government forces] are bringing tanks so they must be preparing to pound the town,” he told Reuters.

This may augur the organization’s redemption – or a catastrophe.

I see my first ever boss, Geordie Greig, has been nominated as the editor of the London Evening Standard by the new owner of the paper, playboy oligarch and former KGB spook, Alexander Lebedev.

I’ve interviewed Lebedev in Moscow. He is a strange man. Not your typical Russian oligarch at all. He’s something of an outsider in Putin’s government, despite having worked as a spy abroad (he was based here in London during the 1980s, and his job was to monitor capital flows from the USSR).

He’s much closer to Gorbachev, and the two own one of Russia’s few independent newspapers, Novaya Gazeta. People were worried Novaya Gazeta would lose its teeth when a KGB man bought it, but no, it still seems full of brave journalists -  one of which was gunned down in Moscow in mid-January, while walking with a human rights lawyer.

The thing that struck me about Lebedev was how wowed he was by British society. He enthused about a dinner he was at in London, where he sat between Tom Stoppard and Tom Wolfe. His son Evgeny is even more of a butterfly, and he could be the one in the driving seat at the Standard.

What will be interesting is how the paper will report UK-Russian relations, next time Russia is in the news for some aggressive action (shouldn’t be long now), particularly if it took place in London, like the Litvinenko killing. I don’t think Lebedev would sit by and let the Standard slag off the Kremlin, as one previous editor, Max Hastings, is fond of doing – he referred in passing to Putin as ‘Russia’s chief Mafia capo’ in a Mail article last week. Not sure that would wash with the new proprietor of the Standard.

Wildcat strikes have gone viral in the UK – oil, power and nuclear workers have all walked out and the government is scrambling to get the situation back under control.

No panic buying as yet, but if the strikers push a little harder, we might see signs of a systemic disruption.

Of course, no 4th generation strike would be complete without an online presence – Twitter doesn’t seem to be playing much of a role as yet, but there are a number of bulletin boards out there. Bear Facts is one that’s providing coordination for an otherwise highly distributed action:

This site has been specifically designed for engineering construction workers i.e. Welders, Platers, Erectors, Pipefitters, Mechies, Scaffolders etc for the purpose of improved communication and the sharing of information.

We all know how hard it is to keep in touch with what’s going on in this game when we all work on different sites across the country.

Action is now taking place nationwide. Demonstrations are taking place outside sites from Teeside to Wales. Scottish workers have downed tools and taking part in demonstrations in support. The government is being lobbied by the trade unions, in other words…the gloves are off and the fight is on!!!

Of course, half of those registered on Bear Facts are probably infiltrators (both journalists and spooks) – informal SMS networks are probably carrying most of the sensitive information, as they’re so much more secure.

Earlier in the week, Charlie talked about the Tories’ weakness on foreign and defense policy. In many ways, he gave voice to a view felt across the British foreign and defence community. That the Tories do not have a serious and detailed set of national security policies that can be turned into government action. The contrast to the Obama administration is stark. The Democratic President has been able to populate his administration with America’s finest foreign policy thinkers, all of whom have thought deeply about what a Democratic foreign policy should look like.

The Tories are not the only ones blame for the dearth of policy thinking. The British system of government militates against party-based subject-mater expertise. Parties are meant to develop the broad strokes of ideas, which will then be developed and implemented by officials if they enter government. It is therefore very difficult for the Opposition to attract experienced foreign policy thinkers. The pay is low and the rewards are not as attractive as in the U.S. The most a future British Prime Minister can offer is junior ministerial portfolio, working to a senior politician whose background may not be well-suited for a security-related job.

But one issue can be parked at the Tories’ door. Having canvassed a wide section of the London-based foreign policy community, the one issue that keeps coming up time and again is the Tories’ euro-scepticism. As one senior (and decidedly euro-sceptic) thinker told me: “The Tories are rowing back on the pragmatic NATO-EU policy that Malcolm Rifkind developed when he was Defence Secretary.” A widely-respected senior military commander told me only two days ago: “It’s as if a veil descends across their faces when Europe comes up. They don’t even want to engage. But this is not about a European army; it’s about being able to work with allies.”

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The G20 London Summit in April will be Barack Obama’s first trip to Europe. The Canadians get him first (apparently this is traditional), while the Japanese (who see the G20 as an evil plot to dilute their influence) are hoping for a sneaky bilateral before the big G20 powwow.

But London will be the big one. Gordon Brown – tired of saving the world on his lonesome – will slip into the role of Robin. Obama will play Batman and kick the world back into shape. The role of Joker is yet to be cast.

But will the summit be a success? The British PM has a lot riding on it, and not just because he believes he can use the event to transform his electoral prospects. We’re in the midst of “the first financial crisis of the global age,” he says, and the best solution is try to bind all the key global issues (economy, trade, climate change, energy, development etc) into a new vision for a  “global society”.

“This is not like the thirties,” Brown told a Davos audience (slightly plaintively, perhaps). “The world can come together.” But will it? And more to the point, will Obama reserve sufficient bandwidth to global coordination? Or will he be sucked into further America First policies, as the mess at home hoovers up a growing proportion of his time, energy and political capital?

The past does not dictate the present of course, but the historical precedents are not so good. The nearest equivalent to the London Summit in the thirties was World Monetary and Economic Conference, which was held in the summer of 1933.

This meeting, which bought 66 countries together in last ditch attempt to trigger global economic recovery, was derailed by a new US President – Franklin D Roosevelt – who had recently been elected in a landslide. Roosevelt rejected a compromise deal that had been hammered out by his own delegation.

The result was humiliation for a weakened British Prime Minister, and a furious reaction from the other European nations, led predictably enough by the French. The Germans, meanwhile, were left out on a limb. Hitler – just settling in as Chancellor – was forced to disown his Economic Minister mid-summit. It was an early setback for him on the international stage.

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News from Lebanon:

BEIRUT: Poland has said it may withdraw its troops from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), prompting fears of a “crunch” in international peacekeeping resources as governments slash spending in the face of the global financial crisis. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Saturday that his government would “certainly take a decision” this year on the continued presence of almost 500 troops that the country contributes to UNIFIL.

Last month Poland announced it would cut its contribution to a peacekeeping force in Chad in a bid to save money.  “We will consider whether it makes sense to continue certain foreign missions,” Tusk said.

His comments come as his government announced it is cutting spending by almost $5 billion as the global economic crisis deepens, and there are fears that other countries could follow suit and seek to save money by withdrawing troops from expensive overseas peacekeeping missions.

Last week France announced cuts in such missions around the world, including the withdrawal of two naval vessels from UNIFIL’s maritime contingent, which patrols Lebanese waters to prevent arms smuggling into the country by sea.

The problem stems from the way the countries are reimbursed for the peacekeepers they provide. The UN offers a fixed amount for each solider that a country contributes to a peacekeeping mission, regardless of how much it costs the country to pay the soldier.

The system means that poorer countries are able to contribute troops without cost to their domestic budget. But in richer countries, where soldiers earn more than the UN’s reimbursement, national governments are footing the bill for contributing troops to the missions.

On this reckoning, the financial crisis means that the West will increasingly demand that poor countries take on peacekeeping – more UN and AU missions, then, and less from NATO. Poor governments may well respond with enthusiasm, as UN subsidies will help keep their generals happy. Peace operations will remain low-tech and dogged by fights between “those who pay” and “those who play”… Not a happy picture.