Business Diary: Bean's answer to an economics thriller

Charles Bean, the Bank of England deputy governor, is an erudite fellow. Still, delivering the Schumpeter Lecture to the European Economic Association, he didn't want to appear too dry. After a lengthy chat about who caused the credit crisis, Mr Bean concluded that there might not be a simple answer: "Just as in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, those with different motives but similar objectives can all contribute to the same outcome".

The football fans who don't like goals

Poor old Sporting Index. The spread-betting firm has had a disastrous start to the football season after a series of high-scoring matches. It's down about £750,000 thanks to games such as Arsenal's 6-1 defeat of Everton. The total goals market is particularly popular with punters, who almost always bet on there being more goals than fewer.

Redwood sticks it to the FSA boss

Good to see the usual suspects weighing in on Lord Turner's suggestion that a tax on banking transactions might curtail City excesses. British Bankers' Association chief Angela Knight rejected the idea on autopilot, while the Tory MP John Redwood said the FSA boss's notion was "absurd". Maybe not as absurd as pretending to sing the Welsh national anthem when you don't know the words, but still.

Google has some hot news for bloggers

Panic at Google's London headquarters, where a fire broke out on the roof terrace yesterday. Happily, no-one was hurt and the flames were brought under control very quickly. But the building's evacuation took a while, with many Google geeks too busy posting updates on Twitter to concentrate on getting out.

The BBC covers every base

No one could accuse the BBC of failing to cover the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers next month with sufficient gusto. A series of documentaries on various television and radio channels will include programmes on its World Service stations BBC Azeri, BBC Kyrgyz and BBC Uzbek.

Number of the day: 55%

The proportion of pub drink sales in Scotland accounted for by Tennent's lager, bought yesterday by C&C.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk