I got sent this during the week and, because it’s a bit lengthy, I’ve only just got round to reading it. It’s very Clarkson:D:
**Jeremy Clarkson nails his credit crunch hell to the UBS colours
**
We know that private banks go to great lengths to live up to their name and keep details of their clients shtuumm, so bankers at UBS must be twitching after controversial television presenter Jeremy Clarkson outed himself in a Sunday newspaper column as a client of UBS Wealth Management.
And not a happy client either, after getting burnt by exposure to AIG on the recommendation of Zurich’s finest into which he twists the knife, saying “I might as well have asked my dog for guidance”.
Top Gear presenter Clarkson recounts a “mind-numbingly boring conversation” about the impact of the credit crunch with a banker “who casually mentioned that the giant Union Bank of Switzerland was in trouble.”
“UBS? That’s where I’d plonked all my life savings. What do you mean, trouble? Are you saying that because some Mexicans can’t afford to pay their mortgages I’m in danger of losing the fruits of a lifetime’s graft? The answer, when translated and condensed, was yes,” wails Clarkson.
"As I sat there on that horrible Monday, watching the whole financial world on the brink of collapse, I thought back to all the midnight oil I’d burnt writing these columns, all the crappy hotels I’d stayed in while making various television shows. And how all of that revenue would be lost for a raft of reasons I simply didn’t understand.
"Of course I made strenuous efforts to get my money out of AIG as soon as the scale of its problems became apparent. But it wasn’t possible. It had shut the fund in which I’d invested and it would remain closed for three months while it tried to sell the assets. “We need to do this in an orderly fashion,” said the man on the phone, calmly.
"Inwardly I was screaming. I don’t give a **** about an orderly fashion, any more than a man in the trenches wants to look smart while running for his life. It’s my money. I gave it to you. You’ve squandered it on a Mexican’s house in San Diego and a stupid football team and that’s your problem. Not mine.
"It turned out, however, that I was wrong. It was my problem, so I decided to try to understand banking. And what I’ve gleaned from a two-week crash course is that it is completely unfathomable. There isn’t a single person in the entire world who has the first idea how the system works.
"It’s like the internet. An entity. Something that can be brilliant or terrible, depending on nothing that the human mind can grasp. But either way, it cannot be turned off.
"This, for example, is what AIG had to say about the situation. “Approximately $307 billion . . . of the $441 billion in notional exposure of AIGFP’s super senior credit default swap portfolio represented derivatives written for financial institutions, principally in Europe, for the purpose of providing regulatory capital relief rather than risk mitigation. In exchange for a minimum guaranteed fee, the counterparties receive credit protection with respect to diversified loan portfolios they own, thus improving their regulatory capital position.” That’s not English. So far as I know, it’s not even human. It is rhyming slang for bank.
"Then, for no reason that anyone can explain, news came through that the American taxpayer had rescued AIG. I was beside myself with happiness. I was also in California. So I turned off the CNN business report – the BBC was doing something on global warming, as usual – ran downstairs and, much to the surprise of the hotel doorman, thanked him and everyone in the lobby for getting me out of such a deep and confusing hole.
"Sadly, however, it turns out I’m still in it. You see, I’ve just received a letter from an AIG assistant general manager – it has obviously put its top men on the job – saying that I can either have a fraction of my investment back in December, or I can take out a new fund – using imaginary money that obviously doesn’t exist – and hope to get it all back at some unspecified point in the future.
"Now, I’m a gambler. I love the horses and playing cards. But this is a big one. This is keeping me awake at night. Can I really put 20 years of savings on red and hope that Carlos from El Paso sells his pickup truck to pay off his mortgage?
“My banker can’t help. He, like everyone, is caught up in a whirlwind of uncertainty. I asked him a million questions and he hasn’t been able to answer one. Advice? There’d been plenty in the good times – but now? I might as well have asked my dog for guidance.”
Well, one can’t expect Clarkson to be overly generous in his praise of the jewel in Switzerland’s banking crown. At an awards ceremony in 2007 he asked racing driver Lewis Hamilton, “Are you really going to Switzerland? There are 187 countries in the world. But Switzerland, for goodness sake?”
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