Tag: Competencies
Introduce professional standards for bankers
It is true that professional reputations are not what they once were, that self-regulation of standards of competence has often been inadequate, that professions’ ethical standards have declined generally. But it is also striking that such decline is most noticeable in the areas of law and accountancy closest to financial services.
Separating the buccaneers from the meticulous
Diversified financial conglomerates are a bad idea. Shareholders become victims of the organisational tensions that follow, customers suffer the resulting conflicts of interest, and taxpayers see government guarantees used as collateral for speculative trading.
Unhealthy levels of ‘Great Leap Forward syndrome’
Private sector managers are not immune to Great Leap Forward Syndrome. They rant about organisational transformation, believing they can move mountains by the strength of their will and the extravagance of their vision.
Wind down the market in five-legged dogs
Banks should retire to the traditional and profitable business of taking deposits to make loans: the business we want them to do and the business they really understand.
The titans’ inability to say sorry
It would be consoling to believe that the titans of finance know in their hearts they are at fault, but are advised not to admit it. However, mostly they do not express regret because they do not feel it.
A passive approach to bank stakes is inadequate
The primary purpose of government investment in financial institutions is not to ensure that the taxpayer gets its money back – although that issue should certainly not be neglected – but to ensure that ordinary banking functions operate well.
Friedman and the limits of academic pluralism
Pluralism is the mark of intellectual seriousness: recognition of the force of a wide range of arguments with which one does not agree.
Equitable Life’s lessons for the bank crisis
We seek regulators more competent than their private sector counterparts, we ask them to review not just procedure but also strategy, we expect the taxpayer to take financial responsibility for their failures. There is a name for that policy. It is nationalisation.
Could Napoleon have coped in a credit crunch?
The financial innovation that was once the means of spreading risk is now an unmanageable source of instability.
Why pain is good – in both medicine and finance
John describes the vital role that pain - the gift no-one wants - plays in the evolution of business and finance.
