It seems that life at the UK Treasury is far more relaxing since the credit crunch hit last summer. According to figures released by the Treasury, staff took in total an average of 166 days off a month because of stress-related illnesses in the first half of 2007, while in the second half of the year the figure was 106 days.
Can it be true that working at the Treasury during one of the worst financial crises in living memory is less stressful than overseeing the benign bull market of recent years? It’s unlikely. It probably has more to do with the change of political management at the end of June when Gordon Brown became prime minister and Alastair Darling took over as Chancellor. Apparently it’s far more relaxing working for an "incompetent idiot", as The Daily Telegraph put it, than it is working for a "deluded control freak". It seems beggars can’t be choosers...