Business Diary: Romer's coded message for UK

The Obama administration can't quite help itself.

Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has this to say about lessons she might learn from other countries about unemployment: "If you look at which countries enacted the biggest fiscal stimulus in 2009 and how they're doing, you can see a pretty strong financial correlation – the US, which had a relatively big stimulus, is growing a lot more strongly than many European countries that had much more moderate fiscal packages." A message for George Osborne and David Cameron?

The real experts on cost cuts

The appointment of Sir Philip Green as a Government adviser on spending restraint is understandable: the retail tycoon does have a reputation for paying close attention to costs, after all. However, surely there would have been better candidates. What about Richard Desmond, who just this week announced swingeing cuts at his new toy, Channel 5? Or Sir Fred Goodwin, who has a bit of time on his hands these days, and isn't known as Fred the Shred for nothing. He could have been given a chance to pay his dues.

Commerzbank calls the tune

It's not entirely clear whether or not this is a spoof, but there's a wonderful email doing the rounds purporting to feature the lyrics of what it claims is some sort of Commerzbank company song. "We are the bank, built on values," it begins. "We are the bank that relies on itself". And so on. It's no

Eurovision candidate, but at least it brings a smile, which is quite an achievement for a bank these days.

No help with the blood pressure

Ping! Another email arrives from the British Association of Anger Management, a regular correspondent with the diary. Although we are always pleased to hear its news, this particular missive comes with an embedded graphic of some sort (the technical stuff is beyond us) and crashed our computer. A little counter-productive on the anger-management front, one might say.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk