SUIT AND BOARD

NO PHOTOGRAPHS ARE AVAILABLE, so my readers will have to take my word for it when I state that I yesterday began my future leisure career as an exponent of "bodyboarding", also known as, at my age, semi-suicidal hurtling of one's body on a flimsy piece of plastic into the middle of Atlantic waves on a coastline renowned throughout the world for throwing up waves that can reduce houses into rubble. This also involves squeezing myself into a rubber "wet suit", one of the most difficult experiences I have ever undergone. An immediate comparison comes to mind, but I will not be going into it here.

 

OF COURSE, IT IS NOT THE DELIGHT of this near-death experience that excites me -- if, indeed, that is the most apt term -- but the relaxation it affords me between waves to allow my mind to wander at will and peruse the issues of the day. And no issue has been more "of the day" recently than the utter and total collapse of one of Portugal's biggest banks, apparently against all expectations, and showing that the Portuguese government had no idea of what was going on in its economic and financial sector.

 

WHILE I WAS WONDERING HOW it was possible for this to happen, I became aware of the startling symmetry between bodyboarding and running a bank in which no real money existed on bluff alone. Firstly, in both activities one needs a good suit if one wishes to be taken seriously. Secondly one needs the right board: one that will support one and will emerge at one's side even when one has taken the biggest of tumbles after getting out of one's depth.

 

LASTLY, ONE NEEDS TO LOOK CONFIDENT, particularly when being observed by foreigners, as is the case on the beach I frequent. Thus it was that Banco Espirito Santo managed to fool the, admittedly easy to fool, troika of the three stooges from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, all of whom went over the books and gave the bank a clean bill of health. Good grief! One can only shiver on imagining how qualified these people are to give advice to anyone.

 

(The lower picture shows Curly, Larry and Mo, the salvation of Europe)