I was intrigued by this article in the Times last month about Nicholas Sarkozy. At first glance, Sarkozy appears unbelievably arrogant, denigrating other leaders and feeding his own insatiable ego, saying France is fine but everyone else isn’t. However there’s much more to Sarkozy’s comments under the surface. [...]

Let’s take a look at the corporate strategy of the large financial institutions that played an instrumental role in bringing on the financial crisis. The chief executives at these companies tended to favor an aggressive leadership style, which for a long time led them to aggressive growth; as they acquired companies, the largest companies became ‘financial supermarkets’ with a whole range of services. These financial institutions grew and grew, but eventually reached a point around 2004 where their growth stopped. The leadership of many of these companies started to be criticized for not integrating their acquisitions well. And so chief executives responded by making their companies more governance-oriented, with new constraints for things being signed off by teams. These new protocols and procedures made the financial institutions stabilize and stop growing, but they didn’t prevent the financial crisis, and the whole sector is now suffering as banks (and [...]

Earlier this month as a reaction to the global collapse of the financial sector, the members of Parliament made BBC Business Editor Robert Peston defend his reporting on Northern Rock last year. Peston outlined that he was acting on his duties as a reporter and was not responsible for creating a panic by highlighting the deficiencies of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley. He’s quite right. How can a conscientious investigator cause a panic when in fact the system in which we work has such glaring deficiencies?
It is absolutely right that the press and the media should bring to the surface the social issues that we face, particularly one as worrying as the collapse of the financial system. I can see why MPs would wish to take the line of blaming greedy and selfish bankers and an insensitive press and media. The reason we [...]

It is little wonder that banks are reluctant to offer credit to the citizen, to businesses or to each other when bearing in mind the level of debt that currently exists. Official estimates of the American debt currently sit at $10.6 Trillion Dollars. A boutique investment analyst in Moscow considers the US debt to be nearer $11 Trillion dollars. However, two well known US investment banks are far less optimistic and unofficially estimate the debt level to be $26 Trillion Dollars, in effect 250% of US GDP.
In the UK, informed sources place UK debt levels nearer £2.5 trillion pounds. By the way, the UK’s GDP stands at about £1.5 trillion pounds.
What debt are we talking about? – Housing debt, credit card debt and debt ridden financial instruments, such as derivatives, all of which undermine the confidence of the market.
What value is better [...]