Who Do These Bankers Think They Are?

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Frightening Thoughts

Competencies: financial leadership, ethics

Who benefits: leaders at any level; financial managers

Consultant Usage: background material for those working in the financial industries

What’s it about? First of all, I can’t believe I am writing two weeks in a row about Financial Stuff.  I mean I hate balancing my checking account.

But this is a “Wow” article and I just had to pass it on.  It also has political overtones, so my apologies to those of you whose political beliefs run counter to the author’s.  But saying this, if you have an opposing comment let us hear from you.

One more caveat.  This article is seemingly narrowly focused.  The first time I read the article (I read it twice) I had a hard time justifying it for this Blog.  But upon reflection there are a number of ethical, pay-for-performance, financial leadership issues of a general nature that inclusion here seems appropriate.  Or to put it another way, if even one of you readers, reads and think about the article, then I will feel of service.

So what is this “Wow” article?  The title gives more than a hint: “Who Do These Bankers Think They Are?”  The article appears in the March 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review.  It is a hard-hitting, straight-forward condemnation of  banks that is written in lay terms so even I can understand it.

You just have to love a writing style that brings the financial world to life.  He writes about “blind adherence to flawed models”; “predatory lending”; and the greatest laugher of all, when business took a turn for the worse in the banking industry, great bonuses continued to exist, just the name changed from “incentive pay” to “retention pay.”

The author is Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz who is a former Chief Economist for the World Bank, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and Columbia Professor.  So agree or disagree he has the credentials to push his point of view. 

Should you like the article, he also has a recently published book, Freefall, which also takes on Wall Street, Washington “do-nothings”, and the Federal Reserve.  I have not read the book, but I note that it is exceptionally well reviewed far and wide by the likes of the New York Times, The Times of London, Boston Globe, Associated Press, NPR and BusinessWeek.  Didn’t see anything from the Wall Street Journal!?  I am putting it on my reading list.

Catch you later.

[tags]finance, financial leadership, ethics, banking industry, bankers, wall street, the stock market, federal reserve, retention pay, joseph stiglitz, stiglitz, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.