The New Yorker this week has a fascinating piece on the second downfall of Victor Niederhoffer, the hedge fund manager and self-proclaimed "speculator".

John Cassidy, the writer, started work when Mr Niederhoffer was an intriguing character who had come to grief in the Thai financial crisis but appeared to have recovered his reputation and learned from bitter experience.

Then came the summer of 2007 and Cassidy’s subject fell apart again (financially, if not emotionally) in front of him. Mr Niederhoffer had to close his flagship hedge fund because of huge losses it suffered in the extreme market conditions.

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Anybody who uses a PC becomes used to bizarre error messages appearing every so often. But the one that just flashed up in front of me as I was used Lotus Notes takes some beating.

It was a big yellow exclamation mark followed by the words: "Attempt to execute nested form events".

Is that a command, a warning, a description? And what should I do now?

A word of praise for my local coffee shop. It does indeed serve good coffee but another reason I like it is that it offers it in sizes "small, medium or large". Yes, that’s right. Not "tall, grande and venti". Or "large, extra-large and super-size".

My colleague Tim Harford has written elsewhere about how one now has to ask specially for a short cappucino in Starbucks as if is a samizdat item. The menu starts with tall.

More generally, the abolition of the notion that any serving or portion can be small - as if consumers will somehow feel short-changed - is irritating for fans of plain speaking.

I also like the fact that my local frozen yogurt shop calls its main flavour "ordinary". But that is another story.

Column on the Financial Times comment page, October 11th

One must hand it to Hannah Montana. She has not only overcome the handicap of being a fictional character to achieve pop stardom but tickets to her live show have become the most prized and controversial securities since Google’s initial public offering three years ago.

Ms Montana (aka Miley Cyrus, 14-year-old daughter of the country singer Billy Ray Cyrus – he of the achy breaky heart) takes to the stage next week for her US tour. Before a note is sounded, she has caused mayhem among fans, parents, attorneys-general and all others with a stake in live shows.

The rest of this column can be read here. Post comments below.

There is an intriguing American Airlines advertisement in the New York Times this morning announcing a new "non-stop" service between New York and London. Where might it have stopped?

The credit squeeze has left a lot of banks looking foolish. The chief executives of those that have suffered the most are under pressure and several have forced subordinates to carry the can.

Warren Spector, former co-president of Bear Stearns, Huw Jenkins, former head of UBS’s investment bank and Osman Semerci, former head of fixed income at Merrill Lynch, are among those who have been forced to depart.

But that does not mean their bosses are safe. So here, in descending order, are the top three Wall Street chief executives who are most at risk.

1. Chuck Prince of Citigroup. Mr Prince (above) was not popular even before the credit squeeze. Citigroup had not been performing well and even Citigroup executives admitted that they had to do better, but were pinning their hopes on a recovery this year.

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The FT reports today on a strange new market in leveraged loans being cooked up by large banks and investment funds.

The report caps a week of banks including Deutsche, Citigroup and UBS reporting billion-dollar write-downs on leveraged loan commitments. Merrill today disclosed $5.5 billion write-down of collateralised debt obligations, subprime mortgages and leveraged loans.

There is something both mind-boggling and potentially suspicious about a bank’s debt being used to buy its debt. Dealbreaker suggested facetiously yesterday that it was a giant Ponzi scheme (named after the man pictured above left).

Regulators will want to be assured that it is not merely a backhand way of banks boosting the value of impaired debt by selling it to themselves at artificially high prices.

But, for all that, I think it is a good thing.

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Further to my column below, the credit squeeze is taking a big toll on the senior ranks of Wall Street and in the City. Huw Jenkins has already departed as head of investment banking at UBS, along with Warren Spector, co-president of Bear Stearns.

But there is something particularly intriguing about Merrill’s decision to jettison Osman Semerci, its London-based head of fixed income trading and replace him with David Sobotka, who will work instead at its New York headquarters.

It prompts two thoughts.

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Column on the Financial Times comment page, October 4th

This was the week that Chuck, Marcel and Josef stepped into the room.

After two months of fear and paralysis in capital markets, started on August 3 by a memorable Bear Stearns conference call with analysts to reassure them that it was not going bust, Chuck Prince of Citigroup, Marcel Rohner of UBS and Josef Ackermann of Deutsche Bank each disclosed terrible results. Instead of sliding further, shares in the banks rose because their investors now believed they knew the worst.

Bear’s call included an admission by Samuel Molinaro, its chief financial officer, that market conditions were as bad as he had witnessed in 22 years. But the moment that spooked some investors was when an analyst tried to question Jimmy Cayne, Bear’s chairman and chief executive, who had opened the call with a calming statement. “Jimmy stepped out of the room,” said Mr Molinaro.

The rest of this column can be read here. Post comments below.

Goldman Sachs’ ability to cut a deal is well known but there are few better examples than the investment bank’s new headquarters building, which is rising in downtown Manhattan, just west of Ground Zero.

The investment bank managed to get $1bn in soft finance from New York to remain in Manhattan’s downtown area three years ago. It did so by holding out the threat that it might move across the Hudson River to a building in New Jersey.

Now, with the redevelopment of the Ground Zero site proceeding and luxury retailers such as Tiffany opening on Wall Street, downtown is once again an attractive place to be and the Goldman deal is looking embarrassingly generous.

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