Everyone I know wonders if the Fat Cats are losing money, or is it just us ordinary investors?  Fat Cats seem to be thin on the ground these past days, remarks Mrs. M. Normally these self-assured, bespoke-tailored, floppy haired euro-titans with their £20,000 watches and long-legged accessories are very much in our faces.

My friends in the US say it would have been re-assuring if we had heard a few Fat Cats offering to return the odd billion, or a £50m bonus or two.  But no, there's silence from the ranks of the hedge-funds, short-sellers, speculators, CEO's and derivative traders, not even a ‘MEOW!'

Have they gone back to their seed pods or their crypto-chambers to wait out the crisis before they return to the bad old ways?

Usually we are bombarded by these smug croesus (es) in the luxury section of LUXX of the Saturday Times or Vanity Fair.  They grin out at us from their recession proof lives, the first class lounges of their existence...the limos, the uber-yachts, the £35m Notting Hill mansions, the quintessentially planned parties.  Poor dears!  Damien Hirst sales are packed with them, and they parade their charitable acts in the press in proud competition about who's the biggest giver.  Few of us are convinced by their philanthropy as anything more than another ornament.

Could it possibly be they are afraid to show their faces?  In the US they might be lynched.  I imagine even Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, would be afraid to go out without a body guard.

Could it be that a few Fat Cats got skinned?