So the first day in Chicago and I was up earlish this morning and headed off to the Peninsula to have breakfast with Teresa before heading off to have my first day of outings. Breakfast was good and then I hit the Chicago subway to head down to do one of the walks as recommended by the Lonely Planet around what is called ‘the loop’. The walk itself was pretty good and the architecture of Chicago is pretty bloody amazing – given that it is all relatively recent. Afterwards I headed back to The James to get reading for dinner and we went to the Ralph Lauren restaurant (the latest thing is obviously for fashion brands to diversify into all sorts of other things). Dinner was great – I had the nicest bit of meat – and the conversation was brilliant. I was seated next to a gastroenterologist I had met before named Fred who is from NYC and was giving me all the tips on Japanese to eat and galleries to visit. Good fun.

When I got back to the hotel I was interested to read the papers lampooning the four major Australian banks for not passing on the full benefit of this week’s 0.75 percentage point cut in the official cash rate. Westpac has cut its rate by 0.65; NAB will cut by 0.62; ANZ by 0.58; while some of the smaller banks including AMP have passed on the full cut in an attempt to woo customers. Personally I think this is probably commercially realistic because it is currently costing them more to provide credit. But you can see why some people might think they are being enterprising. Meanwhile NSW continues to be the basketcase of the Australian economy with less than half the number of new homes being built compared to this time last year and the lowest level since WWII which in turn is continuing to put pressure on rents.