Implicit government guarantee for banks

Niall Ferguson refers to the the implicit government guarantee for financial institutions deemed 'too big to fail' (Daily Telegraph, 6 October 2009) in a way that seems to imply that managements managed their business recklessly because they relied on being baled out if things did not work out well. We would dispute that managements were that devious and prefer the alternative explanation that - like most market participants - a lot of factors combined to overwhelm managements. A lot of mistakes were made and warnings were ignored but were few were really able to predict the extent of the panic that finally pulled markets to the brink of the abyss. What we are now really worried about is the fact that very little progress is being made in reforming the financial system in a coherent and speedy way.

Who should work in financial services?

An article in today's Wall Street Journal is a timely reminder to repeat the career advice we often give when asked the question: 'Should I pursue a career in financial services?' The key point we always make is that you should not choose your profession based only on the expected level of compensation. During the past ten years too many people were lured into City and Banking jobs based on the reports about extremely high salaries paid to some lucky professionals. But this exceptional period may not last forever and spending your working life doing a job that you are not really passionate about is a life of misery. When I started to work with a stockbroker I did it because the stock market was already one of my hobbies during High School and I would have worked in the Securities business even if salaries were just on a level with most other skilled professions.

Lloyds TSB - Neelie does it again!

This is a full-time job - keeping up with the arbitrary rulings of an unelected bureaucrat in the twilight years of a career spent sailing through various public sector jobs! Mrs. Kroes even finds time to chair Poets of all Nations in her spare time. But on a more serious note we think that the latest threat to Lloyds TSB - while maybe justified in principle - is lacking any moral justification as long as no one (and we wait for contributions from any reader who can provide them) has given us an explicit explanation of the yardsticks that the EU Kommissars apply in their rulings. (see our earlier comment further down for more on this scandal).