His Lloyds TSB/HBOS scoop gives him the double after getting the Northern Rock story first last year. Robert, an ex-MT columnist, has friends in very high places and is regarded as a safe pair of hands into which to let slip unpalatable news.

Today his blog welcomes in a New World Order. It's a world, he writes, where the ploddingly dull will rule: 'The credit crunch is creating a new world order in banking and finance... conservative institutions, and those with simpler business models and a history of careful management of their funding sources, are the new superpowers... it's a world in which even Morgan and Goldman may well have to surrender their proud independence.'  

It's also potentially a world where, as Polonius from Hamlet would have it, the best thing is 'neither a borrower, nor a lender (to) be.' We're entering a new world of fiscal realism. We're all acknowledging that we've been collectively very unwise and are now going to don a hairshirt. A world where the likes of Andy Hornby (CEO of HBOS) won't even be allowed to work behind the til in a branch of Halifax because he's a only a profligate 'retailer' at heart, a marketeer (jeers), he's too young and he's only got a degree in English, rather than some accountancy exams, which means he likes to say 'yes' too readily.

This is all very well. It might be unavoidable. But anyone who kids themselves that life is going to be just fine working to these new, tough rules is kidding themselves. Bad decisions will be made of the negative sort. The whole capitalist model is based on risk, chancing something that may or may not work, and persuading someone to back you on that chance of it working. This new world order will be one where the bank likes to say no. Let's hope it's not a new world order where after 10 year's hard saving you put your cash down for a new car, and then two years later, after your dutiful wait, it turns up and it's a Trabant. And it's only available in black. Or grey.  

There are more questions than answers at the moment. What was it about AIG that made it an imperative for US authorities to save it, whereas they allowed Lehman to go to the wall? Was it the potential systemic damage to the market? The cure for moral hazard, of letting AIG go bust, would be worst than the cost of going to its aid.

What on earth was an insurance company like AIG doing up to its neck in all these dodgy, arcane derivitives which all began when they hired a bunch of operators back in the 80s from Drexel Burnham Lambert? Remember them? Several wound up in prison.  

More broadly, would your average investment banker know a moral hazard if one came up to him or her in the street? I doubt it. Traditionally, the only kind of hazard they understand is the threat to their bonus. In theory they should die by the sword they live by. But they don't fail in isolation - they go down taking the rest of us poor souls with them. If we all wind up carrying their can then what's the point of them not allowing a couple of years to go by, and the dust to settle, before they get up to their vile shenanigans all over again? The politicians and the regulators - and inevitably the lawyers - are going to be very busy in the next couple of years.

Anyway, I've been reading as much as I can and here are some links to some thoughtful and wise pieces:

First, surprisingly Max Hastings in the Guardian: 'Many of these bankers are horrible people but we will still need them.' Max is probably most hacked off at vulgar, arriviste investment bankers muscling in on the rural shooting scene but it's a great read. And true.

Also take a look at the delightfully fruity Professor Willem Buiter of the LSE writing in the FT. Very awkward questions to answer here.

Then, for some light relief,  here's the novelist Will Self on investment bankers and schadenfreude.

In today's bulletin:
HBOS to be rescued by Lloyds TSB?
Editor's blog: Tin hat time
BAA: Anyone want to buy an airport?
Hirst a master of the art of making money
Porsche puts its foot down in VW bid

Is it some Peckham posse member? Perhaps an associate of Al Capone's? No, it's actually Russian PM Vladimir Putin. (He was, of course, referring to the Georgians who recently dared to defy him.) 

And how about this for a 21^st century head of state, the man just voted the world's most powerful by Vanity Fair magazine: 'If you want to become an Islamic radical and have yourself circumcised, I invite you to come to Moscow. I would recommend that he who does the surgery does it so you'll have nothing growing back, afterwards.' That's the way Vlad did things when he was in the KGB, and that's the way he likes them done now.

Likewise when Putin does his annual summer photocall, the tough guy image is what he's after. Not for him the cute shot cuddling a baby. Last year he was doing some coarse fishing in his battle pants with his shirt off and showing his 56-year-old moobs. This year he was snapped shooting a big cat, albeit with a tranquiliser dart. (Litvinenko wasn't so fortunate - his dose was deadly.)

You cannot begin to understand modern Russia, and their need for Putin's muscular approach, unless you comprehend the extend of their wounded national pride. The humiliation they feel at years of Mother Russia being pushed around, at having lost the Cold War, and then having to endure the boozed-up Boris Yeltsin and all his antics. The economic chaos of post-Soviet Russia when state employees such as teachers and military personnel would often go months without pay were a nightmare for most Russians (although not so bad for oligarchs like Roman Abramovich, who went quietly about their business hoovering up formerly state-owned assets). 

But Putin's remedy horrifies Western liberals who cannot understand why the Russians aren't embracing democracy, a free press and respect for the rule of law. Maybe they thought the end of Communism would lead to a genteel society, the like of which existed in Chekhov's plays, where characters sat around in the countryside doing very little, mourning being cut off from the excitement of the Moscow social whirl. 

However, it's not just the Western chatterati who feel queasy about Russian tanks rolling into Georgia. This kind of morale-boosting throwing your weight around makes Russians very tricky people with whom to do business, as anyone from BP or Shell will tell you. There have been some nasty powerplays in recent years: business leader thrown into jail, foreign assets sequestered and contracts torn up. Putin's business muscle, exercised through his cadre of ex-KGB cronies, is rough and ready and it's little wonder that so much foreign capital is now taking fright and flight from Moscow back to the West. 

In today's bulletin:
Inflation up, markets down - and Darling passes the buck again
Editor's blog: Fear the wounded bear
M&S spits back in Waitrose food spat
Sainsbury's: open wide and taste the difference
Books special: A Sense of Urgency

So Microsoft has called on Jerry Seinfeld to help make its image a little more cuddly. Its new TV ad featuring Seinfeld and Bill Gates in a shoe shop has just aired in the States and although Bill is not going to be getting an Emmy, it’s not bad. It’s the first time anyone will have associated with Microsoft with jokes.

For such a ubiquitous and successful company, Microsoft is terribly unloved. A billion people use PCs that run with Windows. The geeks that might admire its amazing achievements regard Microsoft as the Evil Empire and Gates as the prince of darkness. The punters get frustrated with Vista and wonder why Macs look so much cooler than PCs (which isn’t Microsoft’s fault). Love and a 95 per cent market share are a difficult mix.

This charm offensive presumably has a lot to do with Microsoft’s ongoing battle with arch-rival Google, as the pair size up for the Mother of All Browser wars. But even Google, which as we know never does anything remotely evil, is starting to discover that it’s not easy being the biggest beast in the jungle. Privacy campaigners are on its back about the amount of personal information it accumulates, leading to its latest climb-down yesterday (when it agreed to anonymise its personal data after nine months rather than 18).

Microsoft has always insisted in appealing to the head but never the heart. But its head of Windows consumer product marketing Brad Brooks has seen the light – ‘we have a sense of humour, we’re human too’. The fact that they are human – ‘if you prick us, do we not bleed’ – means the nasty jibes contained in Apple’s marketing campaign have wounded them. Who wants to be portrayed as slow-witted and boring? 

So Microsoft had no choice but to take this path. But it’s going to be a long and expensive haul to change the perception of one of the biggest brands in the world.

In today's bulletin:
Barratt wants to buy your house
OPEC spoils the party
Editor's blog: Microsoft's charm offensive
Cleantech innovators looking overseas
Keeping corporates in the pink