Here's the latest from our Highly-Placed Professional.

So you heard it here first, the 'green shoots' recovery ain't as green as it looks. In fact, as one of my clients recently said to me, the problem with those 'darned green shoots is they're buried six foot underground'.

He clearly has a point, given the UK economic figures which recently revealed the worst shrinkage in GDP for 50 years. Gulp! But global stock markets have obliged by following the great wash of government cash, and surging between 20 - 50% this year.

Although, when you talk to investors out there, they appear universally nervous, and it strikes me that this market strength is as much an illusion as the property boom that preceded it. Whole areas of the bond and derivative markets are now trading at fractions of the volumes regularly seen two years ago, leading to thin and choppy pricing.

On top of this, there's a very public spat between the Bank of England and the government over the UK's national debt, incoherent government projections for economic growth, and the five year plan to halve Britain's record deficit through tax hikes. And that helps no-one.

We all know it's counter intuitive to borrow your way out of a crisis that was caused by borrowing too much in the first place, but politics dictates that the choice now is between Labour 'investment' and Tory 'cuts'. It's such a fatuous argument it insults one's intelligence. There is no choice. We can't continue to spend with gay abandon any more. Period.

But as I crept in to work today, only to find the Drain at Waterloo closed again, I couldn't help wondering where all those billions of investment had really gone. The poor old Drain only goes one stop, and is a 'favourite' of many Here Is The City readers, as they shuffle in to work from the suburbs and home counties. It was, of course, closed last year for a full 6 months for a major refurbishment, and opened with the promise that the trains would run - and on time. Am I the only City chap to simply boggle at the fact that, for all this government spending, we still can't make a lousy little train go a few hundred yards without a load of aggro?!

The Drain's the perfect metaphor for the City. As long as you keep it trundling on, everyone's happy. Let's hope the markets hold up this summer, and we don't come back, as many are predicting, to another autumn shocker.

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