London and new york have been reeling all week from the trauma. First there was the shock of Merrill lynch and Lehman brothers, followed by shakes and take overs with AIG, HBOS and so on. 5,000 people in canary wharf were fired on Monday alone, including a guy I know. The Lehman brothers employees weren’t even paid their last months wages (at least not yet) and it looks like they wont be. The City has pulsated like one big ball of stress all week long, with anxiety visible in the faces of all. As I walk to work, or wander on my lunch break, I see the usually confident (ok, arrogant) guys in suits huddled over, talking intensely on their mobiles or in little packs of two. The crunch hasn’t yet changed their drinking habits. Maybe it has even made them drink more, as the pubs in Leadenhall market remain overflowing. Maybe they have decided to drink their last wages into oblivion?
Yet as the city shrieks and screams, I escape to the calm of Geneva.
Despite London supposedly being the worlds financial centre, it is a decaying mess by comparison to Switzerland’s third largest city. I am sure the panic is here to, put it is thus far more restrained, or at least less hysterical. That, and it is one of the cleanest and most efficient places on the planet.
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