The initials ITV stand for Independent Television, but the commercial broadcaster is independent today only because its rival BSkyB helped block a bid for it by Virgin Media. How strange then that Sky is now to be penalised by the Competition Commission for protecting ITV’s independence.

We need not shed tears for the Murdoch empire in losing money but the regulator’s ruling on the ITV stake should worry anyone who thinks corporate finance is about strategy.

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Should we feel any emotion other than envy that Goldman Sachs’ global staff will receive bonuses averaging $360,000? OK, chief executive Lloyd Blankfein’s $70m share of the pot will bring down the average for the others, but even the lowest of employees will take home a windfall that will add significant joy to their Christmas.

If you believe in a capitalist society – and if Goldman doesn’t, who does? – then the investment bank has to be free to do what it wants with its profits. If they don’t go to the staff, they will merely be paid to shareholders or boost reserves.

The important thing is Goldman made profits while many of its Wall Street neighbours are reporting write-offs that leave them in the red. Clever Goldman bet against the trend and won in 2007.

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Window-dressing is OK. It has the official approval of the European Central Bank. In the latest move to circumvent the credit-crunch, the ECB is offering cheap money until 4 January – just long enough for all the borrowers to end their financial years with balance sheets that don’t scare the horses.

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Pensions buy-outs – the latest fashion for solving the pensions problem – are so new the rules are still being set. But the £800m P&O deal not only sets new standards by being the Britain’s largest scheme, it has split past employees from current staff.

The shipping company will continue to run the pension fund of the 6,000 people it still employs, but the 11,000 former workers in its pension fund have been transferred to the buy-out scheme run by Paternoster, the largest of the new companies offering to takeover unwanted funds.

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Cause of current credit crunch: increased lending while ignoring risk. Way to end current credit crunch: increased lending while ignoring risk. The solution devised by the world’s central banks looks remarkably like the problem.

The US Fed, Bank of England, ECB and Canadian and Swiss banks are pumping £50 billion of cash into the banking system in the hope the banks re-lend it to other banks, corporate borrowers, house-buyers, shoppers and anyone else who will revive the global economy.

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For three decades UK governments have been privatising rather than nationalising. As the rescue of Northern Rock grinds slowly into difficulties, however, nationalisation is becoming a real possibility.

State ownership of the bank is the preferred solution for Vince Cable, while he heads the Lib Dems, but it is the last thing chancellor Alistair Darling wants. After so many years selling us New Labour – even embracing privatisation -, the government has no wish to be remembered for nationalising anything, even if it is forced to do so, just as the Tories nationalised Rolls-Royce.

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Conrad Black’s sin was to run public companies as though they were private. He took money from the till like a corner-shop owner financing his Friday night out, rather than submitting the necessary chits. And his punishment is six years or more inside an American prison.

I worked for Black for 12 years as deputy City editor of the Daily Telegraph; I lunched with him and visited his home. He was tough but fair – keen for his newspapers to make profits but loathe to interfere editorially.

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Has there ever been a Budget speech in which the chancellor did not promise to cut red tape? And has there ever been a year when bureaucracy was reduced? It is no surprise to find that not one regulation has been amended – still less abolished – in the year since the latest regulatory reform bill was passed.

As ever, there is much talk – the Department of Trade & Industry was even renamed the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform – but little action.

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The Bank of England has discovered the limitations of pursuing the single target of inflation by using the single weapon of interest rates.

Rising consumer prices may be a risk for late 2008 but there are far more pressing problems. The Bank has found itself under pressure to compromise by cutting rates to stimulate spending, whatever the medium-term consequences.

Even if the Bank is not to be asked to consider growth, employment, the level of the pound or other economic factors, the time is right for a wider definition of inflation. The monetary policy committee should be considering asset-price inflation as well as consumer prices.

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Any finance director faced with London’s Olympics project would stop it before it started.

Unfortunately this mammoth scheme is so far out of control that, despite all the financial advice anyone could ask for (or pay for), no-one is prepared to state the obvious.

The current £10bn cost is four times the estimate made when Britain won the right to host the games just two years ago.

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