Who says the Swiss don't have a sense of humour?

Credit Suisse has got itself in trouble with its shareholders, who blame the bonus-heavy bankers for tanking the share price.

The bankers seem to have managed cleverly to have a system where they get huge bonuses for themselves, no matter how inept they actually are. So the investment bankers are still due big payouts. Credit Suisse has set these bonuses this year to be part of a bonus fund, which is linked to assets with a notional value of 5bn Swiss francs.

That's notional. These are the credit-crunched mortgages and debts - potential value, nothing at all. But then again, if they haven't produced any wealth (magically, from nowhere, as they claimed to do) they shouldn't have the bonus anyway...

US car makers

It's like watching British Leyland all over again.

The BBC is reporting that the Senate bail-out for the US car makers Ford, GM and Chrysler has failed after the United Auto Workers (UAW) union refused to cut wages next year to bring them into line with their Japanese counterparts.

The union must be believing that the three companies will linger on until Obama takes over, and then they can get what they want.

But that'll just leave them needing another bail out, and another. The US taxpayers aren't going to like the idea of subsidising inefficient companies to pay their employees more than the going rate, either.

The danger for the union is that if they keep demanding pay better than the Japanese companies give, they'll end up either as many of the British Leyland employees did - with no job at all, or working for the Japanese anyway.

The car industry is over-supplied, and based on the perpetual churn of new products to the consumers - the former is impossible to maintain, the latter may turn out to have been a late 20th century phenomenon that cannot hold as strongly any more. I suspect that Ford will survive, Chrysler is doomed - the question is what will happen to GM?