Here’s how it works: “All India Restaurant” → A.I.R. → “All India Reports”, the most commonly used law reports series for Indian cases → law → Guardianship Tribunal. Geddit?

I like it because it’s so obscure

Name: Hillary Clinton
Appointed: Secretary of State
You may remember her from: Married to former President Bill Clinton, first lady 1993-2001. Wellesley College, Yale Law School, parnter of Rose Law Firm. Senator for New York state since 2000.
Quote: “We are the president” - according to James B Stewart

Name: David Axelrod
Appointed: Senior Adviser
You may remember him from: Nothing, but he has an Autobot surname (a more introspective variation of Hotrod?) and a moustache that makes him look like he’s still living in 1984.

Name: Gregory Craig
Appointed: White House Counsel
You may remember him from: special counsel to Bill Clinton, defending him against impeachment. A reversible name. Yale law schoolmate of Hillary and Bill.

Name: Ron Klain
Appointed: Chief of Staff to the Vice-President
You may remember him from: Chief of Staff to the Vice-President (Al Gore). Supreme Court tipstaff.

Name: Tom Daschle
Appointed: Secretary of Health
You may remember him from: “Senator Tom Daschle (D)”, from his days as Senate Majority Leader. Wikipedia says of Daschle: “Daschle became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega”. The article does not explain how Daschele’s brother acquired such a quirky name, and whether the surname Omega indicates that said brother was adopted from Greece.

To be continued.

I bet the same thing is happening across the world: every paper puts a local spin on what is really the same story (”iPhone’s new voice-recognising Googling tool is crap”). Just imagine it:

“US English accent confuses iPhone” — the Seattle Bugle.

“Vaticano Latin too much for iPhone - Cardinal warns against playing God” — the Vatican City Bull.

“iPhone refuses to understand Korean - Comrade Kim Jung-il denounces evil imperialist plot.” — the Pyongyang Times.

Sometimes, you just have to look up.

Name:

Sushi Tei (”Sushi pavilion”) is a chain of Japanese restaurants concentrated in South-East Asia (and even has a branch in Shanghai). Its Sydney branch is conveniently (for me) located at Chifley Square.

Sushi Tei specialises in lightly flavoured dishes that play on the natural flavours of commonplace, perhaps even mundane, ingredients. Its specialties include sushis, grilled rice dishes, and soups. On my most recent visit, the two of us shared a seafood paper hot pot, a salmon steak, a crispy sushi roll, and a soft shell crab sushi roll. The food was not ground-shattering, but I found no major fault with it. The paper hot pot looked elegant, and was delicious, with salmon, scallops, enokitake mushrooms, tofu and some kind of noodly thing on the bottom. I also recommend the sushi selection. Apart from the two mentioned above, the crispy salmon skin makizushi excellently combines the flavour of salmon with a crunchy texture. Highly enjoyable.

My only grumble coming out of this visit, though, is that serving sizes seem to have continued to diminish. I am fairly certain that the last time we ordered the soft shell crab roll, the crab legs protruding from the ends of the roll were not so juvenile looking. Considering the price, though, the meal was still fairly good value. Plus, the speed of service makes the restaurant a good choice for a quick, working dinner.

The best thing about the restaurant is the ambience, which is relaxing even at the busiest of times - with light wooden lattice dividers separating the tables, but not detracting from the light and airy atmosphere lent by floor to ceiling windows. The kitchen is open plan. If you want a better view of the sushi chef in action - at the expense of sitting on stools instead of 60-minute chairs - there is a sushi train counter.

Conclusion: Good value, good ambience, and ideal for a quick, quality meal.

Food: 7/10
Service: 6/10
Ambience: 7/10
Value for money: 7/10
Overall: 7/10

Taking photos with a complicated camera is so much fun! Not only do I get to fiddle with lots of settings, but I can almost always be sure that the photos will turn out nice by using more or less of the automatic settings. So long, that is, as I remember to do elementary things like flicking on the autofocus switch. Here are a couple of photos that I’ve uploaded to Wikimedia commons :

Three of the big five independent investment banks on Wall Street have fallen (Bear Stearns bought at heavy discount by JP Morgan; Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy; Merrill Lynch to be bought by Bank of America), and now the fourth has confirmed that it is in talks to be acquired, possibly by CIC, the sovereign wealth fund of China.

Some say the credit crisis is causing a much-needed weeding out of badly managed entities, with unsustainable business models. If that be true, then we are getting perilously close to a conclusion that the market judges investment banks per se to be an unsustainable business model. “What will the world be like without the big American investment banks?” It’s a scary yet tantalising thought, the idea that we may be on the brink of a new kind of market.

Perhaps a better way to characterise it is a rejection of the American investment banking model - the so-called “bulge bracket“ investment banks which have no retail base. The biggest of these independent investment banks include the three that are gone, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Bear Stearns (though Bear Stearns is sometimes seen as not big enough to be “bulge bracket), as well as Morgan Stanely (looking to sell), and Goldman Sachs (apparently not yet in trouble). 

By contrast, the other major investment banks, the Europeans like Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank or UBS, as well as Americans such as Citi and JP Morgan, are called “universal banks” in American terminology, because they engage in both retail banking (e.g. Swiss bank accounts) and investment banking (e.g. buying and selling businesses). The advantage of the universal bank model, as shown in sharp relief in the current crisis, is that they have a soft cushion formed by the retail deposit base. When one of these banks writes down a couple of billion in subprime losses, it’s a big deal but not so big as to threaten the firm as a whole in any way. In fact, the big universal banks have each chalked up more losses than what brought down some of the independent investment banks. One may have to ride out a depressed share price for a couple of years and sack a few thousand people, but one lives to fight another day. By contrast, independent investment banks suffer in a downturn like the present - and it looks like we may be waving them goodbye.

I believe this is a good thing. Independent investment banks in the US were created in 1933 by the Glass-Steagall Act, a reaction to the 1933 bank collapses. This piece of regulatory reform is remarkable for its lack of sophistication. A stock-market crash in 1929, followed by bank runs, exacerbated by an ineffective Federal Reserve and a lame-duck President Hoover, meant that the in-coming administration had to do something, anything, to stop the rot. One of the provisions was the separation of investment banking and commercial banking. This sought to address the issue of conflicts of interest (see Comments below) and fraud by the diversified “universal” banks, and ultimately tried to end speculation, which was perceived to be the cause of the earlier crisis.

This reform was convenient from a regulatory perspective. Separate out commercial and investment banking, and there is no possibility of conflict of interest. But it’s about as smart as using a chain saw to crack an egg: and it sowed the seeds for turmoil in the financial markets. Investment banks are highly cyclical. In a bouyant market, they perform an important role as the lubricant in the great wheels of commerce. In a downturn, they suffer. 

In a downturn, for the economy as a whole, it is much better that the losses in the investment bank be insulated by the larger organisation. The alternative, which is what has happened to the indpendent investment banks, is a fire sale or collapse, which has unpredictable and wide-ranging effects. Witness, for example, the panic that set in around the world after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, as companies and governments raced to count how much of Lehman Brothers’ debts they owned, and how much of their own shares were owned by Lehman Brothers funds.

In other words, the economy will always have ups and downs. Someone has to do the investment banking in an upturn. When a downturn comes, it is better for a large organisation to internalise the damage - fire a few people, write down a couple of billion, unwind losses in an orderly fashion - than for the risk to be externalised and jeopardise the system in unpredictable ways.

In today’s market, the regulatory concerns that triggered the Glass-Steagall Act are fairly adequately addressed by much more sophisticated regulatory regimes. This is well recognised - hence the repeal of the law in 1987, and the rise of universal banks such as Citi and JP Morgan even in the US. Large but separate investment banks present too much risk to the system to be sustainable. They are relics of history, and their demise can only be a good thing for the market system as a whole.

Update The Monday after I wrote the above, the final two independent investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, announced that they will cease to be investment banks and become commercial banks (”bank holding companies”) for regulatory purposes. Essentially, this means they will be subject to more regulation, will vastly expand their retail deposit base, and will have cheaper and easier access to credit. Commentators suggest that Morgan Stanley’s announced merger plans may be on hold, and that it will look towards acquiring a commercial bank with a solid deposit base.

Few cities today have the benefit of these magnificent relics of the pre-gunpowder era. Those which do not, must create them. The Arc de Triomphe anchors the western end of the Axe Historique, and is a gateway to the historic centre of the city as much as it is a singular monument. Melbourne, as one might expect, uses big slabs of red and yellow…. things. (See some beautiful photos here.)

Sydney has the unique fortune of having two mangnificent, “natural” gateways. To the north, the Harbour Bridge frames the main approaches. The much applauded but purely ornamental pylons, combined with the great rising lattice of the steel arches evoke the same sense of grandeur and mystery as a barbicon of old. Through the lattice, the travelor is offered a glimpse of the city, rising up from the sandstone of Millers Point and the red brick of the rocks, to the chrome and glass of the CBD and Centrepoint Tower.

To the west, Anzac Bridge is a more modern rendition of the same theme. The approaches to the bridge curve through the bowels of the residential and formerly industrial Inner West. As one enters the bridge’s forest of cables, the city suddenly comes into view, perfectly framed by the pylons and cables. It is possibly one of the great views of the city. Well, at least when the sky is blue and the clouds are whispy, and you are not headed for work.

I would nominate Railway Square as a somewhat successful southern gateway, although the hodge podge of buildings that surround it somewhat spoil the effects. Where is the gateway from the east? I look forward to suggestions.

Out of my own collection, the 100 Impressionist Masterpieces I bought at the Musée d’Orsay is a favourite. The only drawback of this book is that the section texts introducing each period in the development of Impressionism tend towards the technical and jargonistic - a little hard to wade through for a philistine like me. I’m not sure whether this is a result of the translation process. Other than that, though, it is a visually beautiful book. The biggest advantage is the unparalleled Impressionist collection of the Orsay which it draws on. For example, seeing Monet’s Thames below Westminster not as an isolated painting, but a series of different versions created by the artist as he explored the scene - the comparison allows a much fuller appreciation of the painting. Ditto Rouen Cathedral, ditto the lilies.

Overall, what attracts me to these books are, one, their authoritative accessibility, being written by experts in the field but with the general public as a target audience. Two, the rich resources of a quality museum or gallery which the book is able to draw on. Each institution has its focus, with the publication focussing the areas on which it has the best resources. Finally, the great museums are also great institutions of scholarship and publication, and these books are almost invariably produced to the highest quality, editorially and physically: they look great, but are an even better read.