Under the counter

Positive spinIndeed, the dust has settled sufficiently on the Refco affair that last week's results announcement from Bawag - which is, lest we forget, the Austrian bank which made the inadvisable multi-million dollar loan to Refco's Phil Bennett which kept the whole fiasco rolling - passed with minimal comment. I would hate to see the results go unnoticed, however, if only because they represent a perfect exemplar of the kind of thinking that would have us all whacking ourselves over the head with frying pans on the principal that one feels much better when it stops. Fist up, the bank ascribed a fractional increase in profits to lower provisions for risky loans, which seems to me to be pretty much the same thing as asking for congratulations for not letting a crook borrow E400m secured against worthless stock because he seemed like...