And today's banking faux pas is....

[doodab]

BBC News - FSA finds banks guilty of mis-selling to small businesses

One wonders if the bad news will ever stop...

[eek]

BBC News - FSA finds banks guilty of mis-selling to small businesses

One wonders if the bad news will ever stop...

probably not. Mind you this won't be chicken feed refunds the original story was a Turkish Patisserie who is claiming £300,000 Interest rate swap mis-selling - Are you owed thousands?

[BrilloPad]

From boom to bezzle:

But it is important to understand what is really going on. I’m no fan of John Kenneth Galbraith, the US economist. But he was right about one thing: at the height of a bubble, a punch drunk world becomes so wealthy that it turns a blind eye to financial crime (embezzlement, or the “bezzle). But when the music stops, and the crash comes, everybody suddenly uncovers past scandals. It is worth quoting him at length: the bezzle, he said, “varies in size with the business cycle. In good times people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly. In depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks.” We are now at this stage of the cycle.

Sorry for the long quote - I couldn't see a way of cutting it down further.

[Mich the Tester]

Here in NL, the housing associations who rented out council houses were privatised some years ago. Immediately they started pissing around with interest rate derivatives and swaps, and one of the biggest, Vestia, ended up close to bankruptcy, owing the banks about 15 billion (dunno, might be 5 quazillion more or less) euros when interest rates went down after they'd bet on them going up. Really splendid. Houses that were once owned by the public are now owned by banks who advised some naïve and incompetent 'directors' to buy interest rate swaps. A couple of large care homes and a even a group of primary schools have fallen into the same trap. WTF are social housing bosses, care home directors and headmasters doing messing about with weirdo financial products that the bankers barely understand?

But, you can't just blame bankers; I'm convinced that what we are seeing is not simply a crisis of banking, but the painfully and dangerously slow unraveling of an approach to management and business that's infested every sector of the economy and society. If you want to start dealing with this, abolish MBAs, shut down the 'business schools' and start getting back to a culture where if you want to be the boss, you have to have a solid background in the product or service you're selling. End this myth that if you can manage, you can manage anything. In 1980 two chaps called Hayes and Abernathy wrote an article called 'Managing our way to Economic Decline' that should be mandatory reading for anyone wanting to be a manager. What they said back then is even more relevant now; they referred to a class of 'pseudo-professionals' with no knowledge of how to make or deliver anything, but who though they could 'manage' anything using financial modelling and KPIs.

http://www.goldstandardmanagement.or...WayDecline.pdf

[cojak]

Here in NL, the housing associations who rented out council houses were privatised some years ago. Immediately they started pissing around with interest rate derivatives and swaps, and one of the biggest, Vestia, ended up close to bankruptcy, owing the banks about 15 billion (dunno, might be 5 quazillion more or less) euros when interest rates went down after they'd bet on them going up. Really splendid. Houses that were once owned by the public are now owned by banks who advised some naïve and incompetent 'directors' to buy interest rate swaps. A couple of large care homes and a even a group of primary schools have fallen into the same trap. WTF are social housing bosses, care home directors and headmasters doing messing about with weirdo financial products that the bankers barely understand?

But, you can't just blame bankers; I'm convinced that what we are seeing is not simply a crisis of banking, but the painfully and dangerously slow unraveling of an approach to management and business that's infested every sector of the economy and society. If you want to start dealing with this, abolish MBAs, shut down the 'business schools' and start getting back to a culture where if you want to be the boss, you have to have a solid background in the product or service you're selling. End this myth that if you can manage, you can manage anything. In 1980 two chaps called Hayes and Abernathy wrote an article called 'Managing our way to Economic Decline' that should be mandatory reading for anyone wanting to be a manager. What they said back then is even more relevant now; they referred to a class of 'pseudo-professionals' with no knowledge of how to make or deliver anything, but who though they could 'manage' anything using financial modelling and KPIs.

http://www.goldstandardmanagement.or...WayDecline.pdf

[cojak]

I can't help but think that provided they wear their bank employee passes they can come and go looking like this..



(provided it's the customer's money and not the bank's, obviously.)

[tractor]

....

Here in NL, the housing associations who rented out council houses were privatised some years ago. Immediately they started pissing around with interest rate derivatives and swaps, and one of the biggest, Vestia, ended up close to bankruptcy, owing the banks about 15 billion (dunno, might be 5 quazillion more or less) euros when interest rates went down after they'd bet on them going up. Really splendid. Houses that were once owned by the public are now owned by banks who advised some naïve and incompetent 'directors' to buy interest rate swaps. A couple of large care homes and a even a group of primary schools have fallen into the same trap. WTF are social housing bosses, care home directors and headmasters doing messing about with weirdo financial products that the bankers barely understand?

But, you can't just blame bankers; I'm convinced that what we are seeing is not simply a crisis of banking, but the painfully and dangerously slow unraveling of an approach to management and business that's infested every sector of the economy and society. If you want to start dealing with this, abolish MBAs, shut down the 'business schools' and start getting back to a culture where if you want to be the boss, you have to have a solid background in the product or service you're selling. End this myth that if you can manage, you can manage anything. In 1980 two chaps called Hayes and Abernathy wrote an article called 'Managing our way to Economic Decline' that should be mandatory reading for anyone wanting to be a manager. What they said back then is even more relevant now; they referred to a class of 'pseudo-professionals' with no knowledge of how to make or deliver anything, but who though they could 'manage' anything using financial modelling and KPIs.

http://www.goldstandardmanagement.or...WayDecline.pdf

WHS.

This applies quite aptly for politics too. Just because after gaining your degree in political history you crunched some numbers in a think tank for a few years does not a policy maker make you!