Why men are to blame for the crunch
I routinely characterise the credit crunch as "men behaving badly" - because it's almost impossible to find a woman to blame.
The reckless chief executives of banks who went on a borrowing and lending binge: all men.
The financial engineers who packaged up poisonous subprime debt and mis-sold it as AAA solid gold: they were long of Y chromosomes.
The central bankers and regulators who slept while the dangerous financial party was in full swing: blokes.
The finance ministers who didn't want to recognise that the surge in house prices was perilous, for fear of alienating voters: yup, it's my gender again.
Now there are two ways of looking at the culpability of men for the economic and financial mess we're in.
The conventional explanation is that it's a manifestation of the glass ceiling, of sexism in the City (and in politics, and in the public sector).
Which is to say that women had a lucky escape: they are only innocent of this particular crime against global prosperity because men unfairly elbowed them out of the way in the unseemly race to the top.
And there must be some truth in the notion that we'll only be a fair society when we can heap opprobrium on women for a banking crisis (of course they had their moment in the sun in respect of responsibility for a recession with Margaret Thatcher's economic contraction of almost 30 years ago).
As today's report from the Women and Work Commission shows, there's still considerable discrimination against women at most levels of most workplaces.
But I think there may be a sense (and here I'm on very dangerous territory) in which masculine vices played a dominant role in fomenting the crunch.
And, I suppose, the simplest way of putting this is that I know very few women who measure their success in life by the size of their respective bank balances, whereas I know an astonishing number of men for whom the only thing that matters is "the score", as determined by the heft of their salaries, or bonuses or capital gain.
We've descended into the uncomfortable realm of hack psychology, so we're not going to stay here long.
But I would observe that - in my experience - men are more prone than women to simply run like a train at the goal, and never mind who's flattened along the way.
And the kind of complex mathematical modelling that underpinned so many of the toxic financial products - and of flawed systems for controlling risk - is also a peculiarly male practice. It's the equivalent of an obsession with computer games, or cricket scores or railway timetables: little worlds detached from the real world.
A top male banker (that tautology), the chairman of HSBC, Stephen Green, strays into this dangerous territory in his new book, Good Value. He says:
"If men were to be unchanged by the full participation of women in public life, if women were to participate in public life on the basis of adoption of traditional male modes of interaction, then humankind would have missed a profoundly important opportunity for growth. All the evidence is that something far better is achievable".
His presumption that there will be such full participation by women will be seen by some as naively optimistic.
But if we're looking to prevent a repetition of the kind of financial calamity we've just endured, it mightn't be a bad start to appoint a woman as chief executive of Citigroup (or HSBC), or as chancellor of the exchequer or even (heaven forfend) as governor of the Bank of England (and, by the way, if you have any ideas about how the City of London's male closed shop can be smashed, the Treasury Select Committee is conducting an enquiry and would love to hear from you).
I'm 
© MMX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~52~RS~)
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It's not called the old boys club for nothing you know.
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You say that women are not connected at all with the decisions that led to the credit crunch, but I have yet to meet one that didn't push their husband into looking at a more expensive house, thereby taking a bigger mortgage etc etc!
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dear points of view
why oh why oh why!!
we could save thousands of litres of oxygen, millions of keystrokes, millions of pulped trees and it does not take any experts to work it out, my kids have worked it out and the sooner we or rather the Y chromosomes accept it and move on the better.
The whole damn mess was caused not by risk models failing, not by the perfect storm, not by people not paying their bills, it was caused by short term greed.
You yourself have said in this article and other places the chaps like to boast about the size of their packages.
You can argue all you want about how clever these people are, but clearly they are certifiable.
So in the context of this article, give all the top jobs to the women, anyone but the people who think they are running it now.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Insightful blogging; though I must state for the record that as a bloke, at least last time I checked, I'm not driven by the materialistic fruits of this world. More by the need to fund my good ladies extensive shopping habits and her need for this seasons shoes and handbags...
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p.s. better check your credit card statements and bank accounts
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For years we were told that women were the nurturers and so on, until along came Margaret Hilda Thatcher, nee Roberts. Now it would seem that all the big bankers were men and so they caused the banks to crash.
This is just silly. What caused the banks to crash was a feeding frenzy caused by a perception that money was in free supply and that the new paradigm had abolished boom and bust. It was believed by both most men and most women in politics, the City and the media.
It was the madness of crowds. It was our cultural preference for ambition over ability. It was our prevailing mood that diminishes preofessionaliam whilst extolling celebrity. It was hubris.
Put more simply it was gross stupidity and the stupid are still there in charge of it all. Time for change.
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It's very unfortunate that only women give birth, as this in some way whilst gloriously exciting fo the female also can take some of the formative work experience years away from them.
I run own and insurance broker and we pay equally across the board regardless or sex. my only wish is that when there is a problem with the kids the father would take time off to attend to that equally. It just seems to me that the mother is always required to take time off which is totally wrong.
As far as the city is concerned the club nature will stay that way so long as masonic lodges continue to be so involved with it.
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Don't watch that Fancy Make Up
Rubies Diamonds and handbags
They will take you out for a ride
and give you that fancy slide
They will rob you
They will cheat on you
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Doesn't France have a female finance minister and isn't she doing a great job, and she speaks english as well!!
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Ahhh yes, it's all the fault of men.
Apart from those women who racked up huge credit card debts while the going was seemingly good and who (as much as the men) bought to let with mortgages they can no longer afford. And so on.
If you look away from the very top, you'll find women do indeed share a portion of the blame.
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Is there no limit to RP's horizons? Are you angling for your colleague Stephanie to go for Governor (Goveness?) of the renamed the Old Man of Threadneedle Street? The male ethos is not confined to banking but is clearly evident in the free market competition jungle where it is not the elegant logic of the science of the laws of supply and demand that prevails but the ruthless exercise of power and deception for win-lose individual aggrandisement.
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Robert wrote:
"But I would observe that - in my experience - men are more prone than women to simply run like a train at the goal, and never mind who's flattened along the way."
That's well put, Robert. Unfortunately, too many bullies and sociopaths can be found amongst the 'winners' who have climbed up fastest the career ladders in big organisations.
Ruthlessness, lack of empathy, a grandiose belief in their own competence are character traits not uncommon amongst so called 'leaders'.
Why? If only this years 'bottom line' (money) counts then whoever serves this very narrowly defined, immediate goal is seen as a successful 'leader'.
More complex impact assessments, reflecting on long term destructive consequences of actions or the consequences that decisions have for the quality of life of fellow human beings, go out of the window. Isn't that a stupid way to organise life?
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The only ray of light I can see is that maybe in furure we will not be lead like sheep by a bunch of self serving, self proclaimed experts. Everybody should go and read The Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki) maybe then they will be prepared to stand up openly aginst mis-management of business as they do against government. Then in future maybe people w'ont be prepared to risk their futures on promises of financial sector salesmen with a degree in Bull***t. I certainly didn't and still have all the money they continually told me would be better of invested by them, for them to take their up front commissions, not making a fortune on it but still have it to spend.
On the point of substituting Men with Women I recently worked in a large business with a Woman CEO and quite frankly she went along with the risk taking exactly the same as her predecessor. Quite frankly now that hopefully the lessons are firmly in place I don't think anybody, male or female, will be looking to gamble too openly.
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So the gender pay gap can only be addressed by curtailing the ambition of men, and dragging them back to the pay levels of women?
Funny how these men who rocketed towards their goals with no regard for who they hurt, were apparently organized and sociable enough to put together an old boys club in the first place. You'd think they'd make use of every available resource, regardless of gender.
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I honestly wish you would keep your opinions to yourself.
I work within the Construction Industry, where many women head departments, and to be honest, gender makes absolutely no difference in the decision making process.
There may be some truth in your report as you are one of he Architects of the depth of the recession with your alarmist reporting methods. Perhaps a woman should replace you!
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I am sure male bankers are the responsible ones for messing up the ecomomy so spectacularly... BUT women (and male consumers) are in there very significantly too. Think of all the endless shopping trips, house makeovers, extensions, conservatories, buying, buying, buying - all made possible with all the credit signed up for. Just because credit was easy to get doesnt mean you should sign on the dotted line. Consumerism is the snake eating its own tail.
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I vividly recall Margaret Thatcher, as Prime Minister, in interview, banging on the table and insisting that, "The City must regulate itself!". The Labour government did not had the nerve to change this policy, for fear of frightening off foreign investors. As the lack of regulatory framework is a principal cause of the recent banking crisis, here is one female who should share the blame.
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Because of course, just how much designer wear you can provide your wife with isn't just another measure on your benchmark of earning clout. Silly me, it was all those greedy handbag and high-heel- seeking women that, Lady MacB style, drove their husbands to sell highly leveraged derivative products at vastly over-inflated prices all along!
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This blog has no basis in fact and is a typical populist peston piece. Women contributed at all levels from credit cards to property speculation, buy to let etc etc. Investment Banks are possibly the most diverse organsiations in the uk with front office bankers coming from all cultures both male and female.
The credit crunch is a result of the excesses of the last few years and a necessary adjustment which will in time correct itself. No one group or individual is to blame and it is surely time for even peston to look forward and stop attempting to talk the world into further decline.
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If observations and analysis are made on genders, then how about age, class, culture, location, race and other possible factors (education backgrounds, origin)?
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well this is an old story...remember this stuff coming out a year ago...all that male macho stuff....something to do with a testosterone fuelled feeding frenzy of blind competition.
Well, perhaps there's something in this, but of course the other side of this is that had men not been forging ahead with a competitive streak and dynamism, it is unlikely we would have created as much wealth as we have perhaps ??
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Sexist BBC claptrap. Go through this article and substitute the word "Man" for "Jew" and you will see something that looks remarkably similar to a Nazi anti-semitic rant.
Shameful nonsense.
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Oh Robert, Robert, Robert! Men have been the hunter gatherers of the species for millions of years. Women by default have always herded to the most successful hunter gatherers, and because men like sex, with the best looking women, we work hard to reach the top of the pile. If good looking women were to shun their age old instinct and settle for ordinary men then the drive to succeed would thus be removed and the world would be a happier place unless you're an ugly rich man in which case it wouldn't be so good. But since I'm not one of them who cares!
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If you want to address a real issue (the gender pay divide) then address it properly. The above is just tabloid style rubbish (and an excuse to bring banks into it) - also isn't this another shameless plug of Green's book? Aren't there rules about advertising on the BBC?
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I prefer to treat people as individuals rather than gender. So the people who get to the top usually are quite selfish and driven to success (or greed). So what should be said is that it is the selfish/greedy/unemotional people who are running the banks.
If we are going down the gender route though, it has to be said that the credit crunch was also brought about by people not being able to pay their loans which of course is both genders. But yet again, it's down to individuals.
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There are plenty of female bank managers around these days. And both businesses and individuals are discovering that these ladies can be every bit as effective as their male colleagues when it comes to cutting overdraft facilities with only a few day's notice, or refusing reasonable credit requests from long-standing customers, or charging rip-off arrangement fees and extortionate rates of interest.
Caledonian Comment
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What a pointless article. Not really sure whether your intention was criticise "male" behavioural tendencies or to have a pop at gender stereotypes per se. All I really got from this article was that you've pointed out some outdated ideas about how men/women are/were perceived. If I were a woman I guess I would be a bit miffed that you had assumed on little or no evidence that I would be less likely to be reckless and aggressive as my male equivolent. Good effort though.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I would point out that in the real world, the vast majority of primary teachers are women, (and men in this valuable profession are looked at sideways), that most nurses and midwives are women - and so on; While at the same time most engineers are men, most financiers men, and so on. For all the efforts of the equality revolution, biologically enforced preferences and skills trump legislation. I'm not saying that there isn't sexism or a pay gap - I've seen it and been a victim - just that some jobs attract certain types - and sometimes that type is gender.
I would actually theorise that risk taking on this kind of scale is a male characteristic - and if you try to dilute or prevent it, you will dilute and prevent the rewards that risk brings as well. So we get a recession sometimes - They are inevitable in capitalism - it's merely the trigger that changes. I don't think you can prevent the next recession any more than you can get men to wear lipstick.
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Currently to get to the top women must behave like men.
Even if softer skilled women are part of the workforce they mostly have to go home to family responsibilities on a Friday night rather than join the boys club down at the pub. It is difficult to be part of the group.
For fun I sat in on a High Court trial this summer when sightseeing around London. During the lunch recess the female barrister had been the one working and researching to provide information to move the trial forward. I got the impression the rest of the court had enjoyed a relaxed and lengthy lunch.
It seems easier to leave them to it and concentrate on our homes and children.
Also don't forget that many men reaching for huge salaries and bonuses have wives at home spending it as quickly as they can earn it, or, are aiming at attracting the latest trophy model wife.
You could also say that all wars are started and fought by men.
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1 well not a lot of comments - always thoought most contributors were male..
2 "buy to let" appears to assume "borrow to let". I paid (mostly) outright and so far am very happy with the returns, unlike the money I "invested" in the "always does best over the long term" (fib) stockmarket
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#7 Quite brilliant, and absolutely right.
As to change, however, "nothing doing". European elections, a by-election, and still the people who alone could bring about the change are choosing tweedle dum or tweedle dee. While that is going on change can never happen.
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We definately need more women in banks and business...women who don't try to act like men... and men who behave so that women do not to have to act like men.
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If the behaviour of men is so easily characterised, and if male characteristics create a liability for banking crisis, then, since women find men so predictable, the banking crisis should have been foreseen - by women.
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"As today's report from the Women and Work Commission shows, there's still considerable discrimination against women at most levels of most workplaces."
WHAT?
Sorry, where exactly does it say that? I read the linked article and all I see are averages across the genders. What I don't see is any analysis of the pay of men and women in similar roles with similar levels of experience. If in that situation there is a statistically significant pay gap then we can call it discrimination.
To look at bland, overarching figures across society and claim that they prove discrimination against women is worse than useless. Perhaps you ought to talk to your colleague Mr. Easton before you interpret stats of this nature.
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I have heard this argument dozens of times over the last 18 months. And I whole-heartedly disagree with it. The 'credit crunch' has nothing to do with male dominance of the boardroom - it has everything to do with with the members of those boardrooms taking stupid risks, and the failure of the regulators to monitor them properly.
To imply that this is because of male prevalence suggests that men, by definition, are aggressive, adversarial, imbecilic risk-takers, and that such negative personality traits cannot possibly apply to women. I find such implicit discrimination extremely offensive.
I am not trying to defend the actions of the big banks - indeed, my personal opinion is that they should be stripped of their personal wealth in order to recompense the taxpayer for their misdemeanours. However, it is dangerous to blame their actions on their gender. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are male. It has everything to do with the fact that they're greedy. And women can be just as greedy as men.
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I would be sorry if this blog degenerated completely (as some have already attempted by their posts) into a silly rant about which sex is greedier or more spend-thrift. I have worked in the City for 20 years and have seen some pretty excessive macho behaviour in that time. For the men, there's the lap dancing culture and the drinking games and the porn circles as well as the pathetic oneupmanship about watches, cars and other toys at bonus time. You know what they say: the game is to collect as many toys as possible and the one who has the most toys when he dies, wins. Oddly, men don't seem to trophyise their homes, but to hide their desire for a bigger home behind their wife's demand for one. I think this is false. On the female side, there is silly pressure over clothing and accessories and looks. It demeans both sexes.
But what I think Robert was really talking about is not the materialism of the City which can affect both sexes equally but differently, but about the competitiveness and aggression genes which are more dominant in men. Whereas women have to curtail career ambition for the more rounded ambition of decent family life, married life as well as work balance, men are still pressurised (and pressurise themselves) into pinnacle style ambition which is exclusive and self-centred. Shared credit for good work and shared culpability for poor work are rare - stars and scapegoats are found. In compromising careers for family life, many women have often learned the skill of compromise at work, of consensus and prudent management as opposed to all out victory. What can we do to make compromise, team agreement and co-operation and prudence goals to aspire to rather than carrying the humdrum semi-failure connotation that they often do, especially for men?
It would be nice to see the BBC suppporting some good business management programmes rather than the crass bullying and soundbite stuff that goes on in the Dragon's Den and the Apprentice. If viewers see aggressive role-models talking down to people, whether on television or real life, they are going to behave that way in the belief that it will progress them.
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The most interesting and researchable phenomena brought to light by recent events is the role of SOCIOPATHY (both genders) and its central idea of 'winning at all costs' in the management of all these finacial organizations.
Sociopathy is deeply rooted in the western psyche and probably linked to St Paul's version of Christianity in which he repeatedly and constantly avers that he 'runs his race to win' and 'does not lie' - which implies that the accusation of lying was a real problem for him. His method of combating these accusations was to constantly reverse them, which is what sociopaths do, thinking of themselves as always correct and wrongly persecuted, and their victims as deserving of failure and damnation.
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I believe this is the dumbest article you've ever written Peston.
One of the key players in establishing CDOs based on mortgage debt was a woman. She and her colleagues may have pulled out of the practice early on, correctly concluding that they simply could not calculate the risks and therefore did not want exposure. But it is crazy to suggest that gender alone is responsible for the credit crunch and that it would have been avoided if more women had been involved.
That most of the players are men reflects the regrettable fact the too few women make it to senior positions. This needs to change. But it is simplistic in the extreme to suggest it will automatically lead to better risk management and the prevention financial bubbles.
And if you really believe this.. "but I would observe that - in my experience - men are more prone than women to simply run like a train at the goal, and never mind who's flattened along the way"... I suggest a trip to a busy TK Maxx store might serve as an education.
How many women bought houses they couldn't afford and ran up irresponsible levels of credit card debt? Is there any evidence they are less prone to do this than men? I doubt it. And I don't understand, then, how you can argue that women at a more senior level would have done that much to change the course of recent history.
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Angela Knight is the Chief Executive of the British Bankers' Association.
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The problem is neither male nor female, but it's origin in the UK is directly traceable back to Margaret Thather's era. It was then that the traditional values (which dictated that "status" in society could be achieved in many ways) were replaced by the one single value which dictates that it is only success measured in monetary terms which "means" anything. If society (sorry Mrs. T. , but there IS such a thing as society) were to once again recognise that there are many other ways of "achieving", then this quite possibly wouldn't have happened, not to mention the fact that people would in general be a lot happier......
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Women are entirely capable of competing with men in commerce.
New subject:
Recently the bank spokespeople have been whining that they don't have enough "reserves" to lend at reasonable low rates to decent people with low credit-default risk. But they will lend at high rates. Credit card rates are even higher. I thought that banks were able to make loans using "fractional reserves" Has the UK govt changed the rules?
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In my first job out of uni I tried to explain to my manager that I found bonuses demotivating because they implied I was not willing and able to do the work I was already being paid for - a pay rise would be a better way of compensating me for my excellent work (it didn't help that the bonus was £500 and that would be taxed at 40%, I seriously thought it was a slap in the face). He refused so I quit thinking that despite my excellent reviews if they didn't want to pay me more than my extremely basic salary then it must be because I wasn't worth it, they didn't want to tell me I was really naff at my job. Then all hell broke loose and i was repeatedly accused of being 'all about the money' and other wonderful attempts at bullying that I suspect had worked on women in the past - I should imagine that refusing to give women payrises in the past had also worked.
Sorry, i'm stepping through a lot of issues here... Point 1) A lot of managers refuse to believe that bonuses don't work for everyone, or at least traditional monetary bonuses. When I raised this point personally then backed it up with research my managers flatly refused to believe me. This point alienates a lot of women in particular.
Point 2) You don't ask you don't get. In capitalist societies businesses are going to save wherever they can, if you don't ask for a payrise you don't get one. Women frequently try to work hard to win recognition from a superior in order to earn a payrise that won't be forthcoming unless they ask which they are a) unlikely to do and b) from my own experience even if they ask will be under significantly more pressure to take a lower offer than a male colleague simply because the manager knows this will work.
Point 3) An IBM open day lady once told me that IBM had done some research and found that men had to be sure they could do 20% of a job advert before applying for it, women had to be sure they could do 80% (although most of my female friends seem to operate off 100%)... This made a huge impact on me and from anecdotally asking round friends this seems to be largely true.
These points mean that women won't apply for the top jobs in the first place, the few who get them will be paid significantly less than their male colleagues doing the same work and the bonus culture will sap their motivation until they leave.
Where do we start to fix this Mr. Peston? I know the men I am friends with don't want this for their wives/girlfriends/sisters/mothers too.
Jen
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Wasn't one of the stories of the credit crunch that of a female speculator who'd bought more than 20 buy to let properties, and had then lost it all.
Women can be just as stupid as men.
p.s. why haven't the people who repackaged sub prime debts as AAAA rated investments been gaoled?
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Pointless article. You might as well publish a blog about how nearly all murderers are men, under the title "Men are murderers".
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If many bankers are obsessed by "the score", as you put it, can't we control the markets by capping the amount of assets any one person can hold? This could shift personal aspirations from earning money for personal gain, to earning money for wider social gain. Don't know if it would shift more women into the upper echelons of the financial systems, though.
Cap it to, say, 50 times the average cost of 10 years of living in the UK.
It's an idea I've had recently, but I'm sure someone must have thought about it before. It is apparent to me that asset capping could do a number of other things:
Enforce a realistic trickle-down, reduce the poor-rich gap, increase charitable donations, rein-in the property markets, enable much wider property ownership, increase average wages...
I Look forward to hearing yours and anyone elses views on this.
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Why men are to blame for spotting the potential crisis:
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/07/15/no-one-saw-this-coming-balderdash/
The paper by Bezemer lists 11 economists / commentators who saw the crisis coming. All of them were men. Weird huh?
Best stay out of the hack psychology and dig a bit deeper into why the "Flow-of-fund or accounting" approach is not being listened to by establishment economists or politicians.
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This argument simply propagates the notion of women as the fairer sex, with all of the weight of cultural stereotype that it implies. A similar report was issued by the World Bank in 1999 entitled "Are Women Really the Fairer Sex? Corruption and Women in Government" which argued that women in government restrained endemic (read masculine) corruption.
That top bankers are male can be persuasively argued as having been the product of a culture of sexism that certainly existed, and in many cases still exists, within the city of London and other financial centres. The notion that male bloody-mindedness and unchecked ambition is the sole cause of this is unjustified conjecture, but this is less offensive than the notion that a women in the same role would somehow rise above the corporate model through her innate feminine qualities. Women deserve their place in the workplace not because they are the great moderators of man's follies but because they are equally capable of the successes and failures of men.
As D.H. Lawrence wrote, and I urge Mr Peston to take note, The cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection.
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I fear that there is a step missing here because the culture is so male dominated that even when women get into the boardroom, they are the women that think like men.
1 of 2 things will need to happen: Either we will need a decade of Thatcher's in there so the men in the room can get used to seeing overly pointy shoes and handbags every day, after which a more feminine side can assert itself. Or we can wait another 10-15 years for my generation to get into the boardroom, I'm 30 and it doesn't even occur to me to think in gender stereotypes.
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Mr Preston totally understates the influence of womankind on this financial disaster. He has either forgotten or is too young to remember that before 3rd May 1979 Britain was a completely different society with strong values of responsibility, accountability and community. It was a woman who was the architect of the culture that created this crisis. It took 30 years to happen, but as predicted by the more astute thinkers at the time, it happened no less. The banking crisis was caused by Thatcherism, a woman's ideology based on the lethal cocktail of individuality, greed, irresponsible privatisation, free marketeering and government non interventionism, that was continued by successive (male) governments (red and blue), encouraging a generation of morally bankrupt (male) financiers to behave in an odiously irresponsible manner flawed by the 'Im all right jack' attitude, the trademark of Thatcherist thinking. Problem was that there has not been a politician (male or female) on the scene since Thatcher with the charisma, drive or even the will to change the economic model, as she did for the benefit of society. We have reaped what we sowed.
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Women in the general public spending more than they could afford perhaps?
The woman off location location location encouraging the housing boom?
Only half the blame for the credit crunch should be directed at the banks who LET it happen.
The public recklessly spending and fuelling the housing boom is as much to blame as the bankers. But that doesn't make quite so good headlines, and we couldn't possibly admit it, so lets blame everyone else instead.
On an aside, I was interested by the study a few weeks ago about the incomes of the parents going into various professions. On average those going into Investment banking had parents earning just slightly over the national average. By comparison those entering the legal, accountancy, and others had parents earning much more.
It seems that investment banking is remarkably diversified inters of backgrounds compared to many other professions.
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a nice addition from the himalayan sized mountain of media coverage produced over the last year or so into how the current financial crisis befell us, but it's not about men and women - it's about Goldman Sachs. Pure and Simple. Take a look at the CVs of the people in Government who orchestrated the deregulation of certain markets in America, and organised the bailout of selected companies when it all wet pear-shaped, and you'll find Goldman Sachs on every single one. Spend five minutes looking into how Goldman Sachs went from a company whose core philosohopy was "longterm greedy", after their disastrous foray into Wall St sepculation in the late 20s nearly brought them down. A change in this belief seems to have come about when Clinton came to power and appointed Robert Rubin as Treasury Secretary (Rubin being an ex Co-Chairman of, you guessed it, Goldman). Rubin strongly believed in deregulated markets, and essentially created the evironment that allowed banks particularly goldman, to cause the dot com bubble and crash, the current toxic debt disaster, the oil price scandal (the oil supply will one day dry up, but at the moment, and for the last couple of years, short term supply has been greater than ever and demand is decreasing - this should mean lower prices, but not when there are huge profits to be made from a recent change in the regulations governing its trading...) and now have a look into Carbon Credits - the next playground of the likes of Goldman, a company who paid $14 million tax in the US in 2008. $14 million. The same company paid out $4.7 billion in bonuses and compensation in the FIRST QUARTER OF THIS YEAR. $14 million in tax. that's the real problem.
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Robert Peston forgets (or doesn't know) that:
Women drive the mortgage market
Female choices created mens as they are (according to the best informed female (& Male) biologists)
Female desire to avoid (open) conflict has resulted in high street banks populated by women where choices are made by computers not people.
Obviously it is bad manners to make such observations but as we are driven further toward crisis by politicians & journalists with their heads in the sand it would help if the Biological & Psychological truths of the human sucess story began to be available for discussion in polite company.
Incidentally It is women who also drive the 'divorce based' housing & crisis management market in banking & members of the judiciary who cry crocodile tears when they out to be sent back to school in the sciences rather than the humanities before bein allowed to preside over further human tragedy
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I have come to a similar conclusion myself though its a bit depressing as I am a man. Books such as Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps leave me with the view that evolution has created in females a set of physical and mental attributes that are better suited to the modern workplace than those of males. Because men currently rule the city and make the rules, women cant get the bridgehead they need to succeed. So, with regret (because I hate any kind of discrimination) a period of positive discrimination in favour of women is needed to get the critical mass to change behaviours. And everyone would benefit.
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"We've descended into the uncomfortable realm of hack psychology, so we're not going to stay here long."
Leaving aside psychology of any kind, Ivan Illich had an interesting take on gender difference and economics. He suggested in Gender (c 1980) that gender (male/female) was different from physiological sex (man/woman). In our modern economy, occupations are increasingly gender-free i.e. able to be equally as well performed by a man or a woman. Where they do exhibit sex-bias, i.e. men are top bankers and civil servants, women are housewives, domestic cleaners and nurses, it is for social/political reasons rather than psychological.
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And when the naughty male bankers want to explain their bad behaviour on Radio 4 they send their Mum, Angela Knight to give a more balanced account of their antics.
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I agree with the sentiment, however as large public organisations like the BBC seem able to have few women in senior positions and willing to push out older women from public roles, private sector companies are unlikely to feel any pressure to redress the gender inbalance in their own organisations.
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Men are probably obsessed by the size of their salaries because rich successful men tend to attract and keep the most desirable women....and it seems to work, so maybe women are as gullible as men!
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Why not blame the mothers of the bankers? - if you are going to start apportioning gender based blame.
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Do I not remember that it was a lady that came up with this idea of toxic debt handling ? I´m sure I remember something about it in the Times.
Anyway, why be so reverse misogynistic in your analysis; ALL bankers and finance "experts" are to blame if we´re going to make sweeping geenralisations!
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I seem to remember a study that looked at stock market bubbles, and which traders made the most on the way up, and lost the most of the way down - this was strongly correlated with high testosterone levels.
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erm why was my post moderated there was nothing in it to break any posting rules , was in reply to Robert's post, and had nothing controversial in it , not only that I have had no email to explain why
the crux of my reply was despite everything this was all caused by greed ,
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I thought WAG culture was to blame?
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Robert
OK you win. I now give up and will leave this blog for the last time. Yet another pointless article that says nothing about business. I find is sad that the BBC can not find soemone who will treat us with respect and deliver interesting and relevant articles. Goodbye.
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read all these comments - can't believe how many up-tight men there are out there...you're obviously not getting enough, and with an attitude like that it's no wonder! I'm a banker and a mother. From what I've seen most women who succeed (whether childless or not)in banking emulate a very male style of thinking/working. Only when women can be themselves can we say that glass ceilings have been smashed.
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Your assumption is that women are less likely to be greedy, ruthless and stupid, and that seems reasonable
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"all culpable bankers are male"
lets think about another
"all BBC journalists are socialists". Discuss.
PS. All journalists with family links to the Labour party, please make your disclosures, Robert.
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I seem to remember the BBC being renowned for balanced factual reporting, with an addition of intellectual analysis. Waht happened there then?
Suppose that is the fault of the bankers?
Anyway Labour have been in power for 12 years now, what with the fanfare of Blairs Babes, where has the equality policies been succesfully implemented then?
Oh I forgot, they just talk about doing things as opposed to doing things.
I had better get off this blog quick. Before GB blames me for this Global Recession, that started in America. Even though the UK is the best based country for Blah, Blah, Blah. Insert whatever the topic of the day is!
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There is a great gag by American comedian Rita Rudner she quipped 'If women ruled the world, there would be no wars, we would just visit each others houses and criticize each others taste in curtains'... I can't see women tolerating food mountains on one side of the world and starving children on the other.. Definitely more top jobs for women...
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66 WindChrisLeeds
Don't blame you, think I will join you.
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No women in the City who lost stacks of money. Bramdean would like to hear from you.
I think you're looking for the women's vote.
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No Robert, the 'good and the great' cannot shift the blame from themselves to a whole gender. It is ridiculous and a sign of their desperation to shift the blame so as to escape the proper punishment.
Blame the regulators and the bankers and the politicians and the civil servants NOT men - you article is about as sensible as blaming green socks or short hair.
Get a grip and blame Mervyn King, Hector Sants, the whole MPC (and that included some women), Nick Macpherson and his predecessor Gus O'Donnell as well as the heads of then Banks and their auditors and the vast majority of economists, but don't blame 'men'!
The list of people I have named about should be sacked - not all men!
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I heard a relevant comment and on the BBC actually, so I am only quoting the BBC here:
'A woman's work is never done. Maybe that's why they're paid less?'
Ouch!
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If we are talking hack psychology, then I recommend considering the behaviour of other primates.
In primate troops the dominant individual (usually/invariably male) tends to be the biggest, meanest, and politically shrewdest.
Human organizations tend to be be led by individuals (mostly male) with similar characteristics, whose behaviour often verges on the psychopathic. (According to Wikipedia: "The psychopath is defined by an uninhibited gratification in criminal, sexual, or aggressive impulses and the inability to learn from past mistakes ... Individuals with this disorder gain satisfaction through their antisocial behavior and lack remorse for their actions".)
But (continuing in Preston style) here is the paradox (technically speaking, a question rather than a paradox). Can humans overcome the psychological baggage of evolution and organize themselves in a more rational way? Is it possible to be a tender, caring, concerned, cautious, socially-aware individual and to run a major organization? If not, then it seems that we are doomed to further financial bubbles, wars, and even to self annihilation. (A suitably profound and gloomy Pestonian conclusion, worthy of the greatest of pessimists, Arthur Schopenhauer.)
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Ok so now we are back to the "Glass-Ceiling" and underpaid women ... lets see how we can link it to the current financial situation.
The "Glass-Ceiling" and "underpaid women" are a fallacy. Women are rewarded as equally as men. If either sex takes prolonged time out of work, is not seen to "pull their weight" then they are going to have rewards withheld.
I am a female, working in I.T and my salary is comparative to my colleagues (male and female). I am also a mum, but was sensible enough to understand that the only way I would have a competitive professional role and still be a mother was to have my child in my early 20s, not spend a ridiculous amount of time on maternity leave and not expect anyone else to do my job for me when I do have to take time off.
Ergo, I am well rewarded, well skilled and much appreciated in my workplace.
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...or was it because I mentioned glass ceilings and short skirts in the same sentance?
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It is rumoured that Margaret Thatcher was woman, she deregulated the financial institutions. She was therefore the chief architect of the whole financial mess. Fortunately she did not go as far as Reagan and deregulate the building societies. However, many building societies jumped on the deregulation bandwagon by converting to banks. Those converted building societies then became the biggest exploiters of the situation, now the tax payers are bailing them out. To prevent a repeat, securitisation must be made a criminal activity.
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Bah, all the evidence so far is that when women get power they abuse it every bit as much as men.
This is not in any way a reason to stop women getting power or money, but a warning to people to lower their expectations of the world and the humans within it. We are all avaricious, short-sighted and flawed.
The most insightful comment here so far is number 39 - in order to climb to the top in the business world you have to basically be a sociopath, and to dedicate your life to it. Very few men or women have those traits and are willing to do that.
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This is a very naive post and I entirely agree with the quote from Stephen Green's book. The issue is not about just encouraging more women into these areas per sei, if this is done by them merely morphing into the male mindset. If however, feminine values are elevated and recognised for the value and contribution of sensitivty, compassion and empathy then I'm all for it.
Sadly, all that equalities legislation has done is push for women and ethnic minorities to be accepted on the basis they can become like white, middle-class, male, intellectuals, and in the process sacrifice their own unique specialness. This is not equality but homogeneity and what a complete disaster it is.
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A pointless and facile article that has also unleashed a whole lot of bile about how women are actually to blame for everything because they apparently buy lots of shoes on credit. Sorry to disappoint but not all us women are materialistic trophy wives with no interests beyond shopping just as most men aren't money hungry testosterone addled parasites. Such gross generalisations are unworthy of the BBC's supposedly intelligent commentator on business. Think I'll join some of the other posters in giving future articles a miss.
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Yes, men exploited the deregulated financial system. Men also run the buffalo stampede called the stock exchange. Have you noticed that when the stock exchange is shut, share prices remain steady. The obvious remedy for boom and bust based on rumour and panic is to close down all stock exchanges permanently. Shares will then be bought and sold by independent stockbrokers that are less prone to the herd instinct.
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As a women with many years city experience, I have worked alongside Rob Peston and also in the same firm as Stephen and can confirm that both are honest and honourable gentlemen and its great that they feel able to stand up and speak for women - truthfully and based on experience. There is a glass ceiling, it has been my experience...both in business and in the church (Stephen is ordained a CofE Deacon). We need more people like Robert and Stephen to speak out. Thank you to them both.
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So Zoe Cruz being fired from Morgan Stanley over sub-prime losses was nothing to do with the crisis then Robert? Whilst the industry is clearly dominated by men, if you look properly at the evidence it is clear that men were not the only blame carriers in this crisis.
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"And the kind of complex mathematical modelling that underpinned so many of the toxic financial products - and of flawed systems for controlling risk - is also a peculiarly male practice. It's the equivalent of an obsession with computer games, or cricket scores or railway timetables: little worlds detached from the real world."
You make this sound like a negative for men, but maybe the fact that women are not prepared to dedicate themselves to a demanding field of study is negative for them.
Why is that at an avante guard Jazz concert the audience is predominantly male, but at a middle-of-the-road pop concert the audence is predominantly female? There's no economic imperative driving choices such as this.
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"As today's report from the Women and Work Commission shows, there's still considerable discrimination against women at most levels of most workplaces."
Does it really show that? It shows that, on average, men are paid more than women, which is really not the same thing. For example, plumbers get paid considerably more than nurses. Far more women choose to be nurses than choose to be plumbers. That's their choice.
Whatever the reasons, there are still plenty of jobs that women mostly don't want to do. Is there any point trying to change that with legislation? I doubt it.
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"We've descended into the uncomfortable realm of hack psychology, so we're not going to stay here long."
You've been there for as long as I can remember - why the change of heart now?
Is there any chance you could actually give over your column inches to someone with something useful and/or relevant to say? Your scaremongering and rhetoric-riddled, self-aggrandising entries have irritated me for a while, and now it seems that you have actually driven me to sign up to comment JUST to let you know how little I think about you and your comments.
I have my own blog. It's purpose is to inform, education and amuse - as should be the purpose of any blog. Yours is purely a device for disseminating misinformation, name-dropping and making wild unfounded speculative statements regarding issues you clearly don't fully understand.
Apologies if that sounds a bit harsh, but enough is definitely enough - and it's time for a reality check.
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Typical sexist comments from eddixon and Bryn_the_Cat. Not all women push their partners or husbands to reckless expenditure or demand they are lavished with all the latest fashion accessories. I actually support my partner financially, we live in my house, I pay the mortgage. And no, I don't wear a kaftan, have unshaven armpits and eat lentils. I just happen to have the better paid and more secure job.
You men are supposed to be tough ones. Why do you let your women push you around then, as appears to be implied in your comments?
Get over it!
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Women are definitely responsible for the Euorpean scatter-cushion mountain
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Isn't it funny how major wars stopped once the invention of the aeroplane bought bombs to the home. Until then 'we' were quite happy for millions of British men to go fight and die overseas (nowadays it's hundreds, not millions, enormous difference). Women love a guy in uniform.
I don't quite see how you can look at the typical mega shopping center with 90% of the shops aimed at women, and blame consumerist excesses solely on men. I don't really think single men typically rack up big credit card debits down Ikea and B & Q redecorating their house every 5 years, either.
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Interesting blog robert, but Angela Merkel's German economy also seems to have gone t*ts up?....
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Sexism of course has the same injustices as all other forms of discrimination, unfortunately it is probably the most ingrained in society.
For me, grannyfromthesticks raises probably the biggest problem of sexism, namely that women need to behave like me to be taken seriously. She is absolutetly right that the culture of decision making needs to be taken away from being in the pub or on the golf course to be being within structured company meetings.
Compassion, an ability to empathise, caring, lack of aggression , planning for the future are all virtues that most companies would be better off for having. Nurturing children and the family are characteristics of a leader.
Unfortunately as invisiblehandadvisor said "Ruthlessness, lack of empathy, a grandiose belief in their own competence are character traits not uncommon amongst so called 'leaders'."
Clearly everybody should be allowed their view, but i am surprised at the number of blogs which seem not to want to discuss sexism as its own topic.
Maybe raising the topic via the banking crisis is a mistake as clearly there was a specific, greed, risk taking and dog eat dog culture to blame. Sexism though is still a major problem in UK commerce and industry, resulting in not least of all the loss of a wealth of talent.
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Having worked under a woman MD who took a successful profit-making company (built up by men) and turned it single-handedly into a loss-making one, I don't believe that all women would necessarily be a better choice. She masked her incompetance by sacking a succession of scapegoats and still the group management backed her. She was more interested in her bonuses and share options than her staff. Eventually the company had to be merged into one of the other group comanies as we were no longer credit-worthy in our own right. Along the way a lot of good people were sacked or thoroughly demotivated and left before the inevitable redundancies.
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This is just another example of modern society's desperate need to find a reason to blame men for everything.
This article would have you believe that men are at fault for the collapse of the global economy while blissfully ignoring the fact that women make up 50% of that population, more than 50% of university places, more than 50% of world wide consumption and after 70 years of feminism (which has morphed into a rights grab not in the slightest bit concerned with equality), they make up a large proportion of the work force.
Are you seriously suggesting that there wasn't a significant proportion of women working in the financial industry at all levels? Are you seriously suggesting that there wasn't a significant proportion of women making the political decisions? Are you seriously suggesting that the women of the world were making prudent financial decisions while the men, completely unbeknowst to their so-called better halves, were making reckless decisions that brought down the whole house of cards?
Where were these voices of reason? I didn't hear them.
Where were these pillars of modern society? I didn't see them.
What exactly was Nera doing while Rome burned?
There are two ways to sell to women - either compare them unfavourably to women (the self-styled "beauty" industry) or compare them favourably to men (diet coke / tampons - what men have to do with either is beyond me).
This article reminds me of the latter.
All I saw was a massive party where everybody was hammered and we're all suffering the hangover equally.
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Quite right.
they are Called BLAIR and BROWN
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Robert, I enjoy your blogs, especially when they are based on facts, stellar insights, etc, but when you venture into social science lah-lah land, then you are diminishing your status in my mind. Gender is just a poor area to set up a hypothesis on this complex area and how can anyone prove/disprove one way or the other? What's Steph' Flanders got to say about this? Your a front man, sorry person, for a great team of contributors. Keep the high ground. I just hope you are not getting bored with the complexity of the core topic?
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It would be nice to see some focus on changing the way we reward people in business. Until the focus for reward changes from the the short term daily / weekly / monthly perfomance to 2 year, 5 year etc there will be no change in the way people behave nor the decisions they make. This would require a fundamental shift in business culture as it will require people to remain in a role in excess of 5 years to achieve their reward, rather than hopping from job to job and reaping short term benefits.
If you want a byline then its a change from instant gratification to long term satisfaction.
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Doesn't it all come down to the breakdown of social relations between men and women?
Boosted by media influences that make men feel inferior if they aren't driving a fast car and have wedges falling out of their pockets coupled with intense pressure on women to look pretty, young and fashionable - even to the point where they undergo uneccessary surgery to change the way they look and spend fortunes on clothes trying to imitate the rich and famous. Most people cannot afford this lifestyle in 'cash' - and have to borrow to achieve it.
Is it any wonder we got into a complete mess? In the past at least either men or women would have been the prudent influence in the household - now there are none.
The media influences the people to consume more and more and the Government do nothing about it. You can call the 'personal responsibility' card all you like but we're now seeing the effects of slack legislation being allowed to target children - thereby creating consumer beasts who know no different.
The need to impress often comes from a great fear of rejection and the desire to be accepted.
We're all social creatures and the consumerism is a reflection on how the social fabric is damaged and what the result is going to be.
What is true is that the (responsible) people at the top are in fact 40+ years old MEN. This is because men of that age think 'they know best' and have created a system whereby they are the only ones who make important decisions. The lack of balance in that decision making leads to their downfall - in the same way past dictators have always been 'hoisted' because of their lack of inclusion of all people (gender, race, religion etc.). This is also why the politics of this country are skewed towards aggressive and violent tendency - because old men are often frustrated and angry at their inability to prevent ageing and the realisation of their mortality.
...things haven't really changed in this aspect since Victorian times.
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BBC financial journalists who also got it largely wrong...all men. Well I never, tch tch.
website which got it largely right, owned my man....www.notbornyesterday.org. Just fancy that.
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Interesting how all the comments so far are disgruntled men - are they the only ones with time to read this article in the first place?
I think you're all missing the point - men like risk. They like to gamble. Women wouldn't dream of putting up £3m on the price of oranges lifting by 1p. It takes a bit of both sexes to run a Risk Management department well - caution when it's needed, and prepared to take a risk when there's money to be made that isn't going to put other people's necks on the line.
Maybe we should have transsexuals in the top banking jobs ......
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I would love to agree that it is all the fault of men. However that is simply not true. It is the fault of people who have not done their jobs properly.
Having said that, it is my experience that many women end up in "better" jobs if they mimic stereotypical male behaviour - the same behaviour which a great deal of men do not feel the need to exhibit.
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There's a fundamental flaw in that argument... mostly that the women who gravitate towards the top positions in a company tend to act like men anyway. It would just be more girls in the Old Boys' Club with little change. For gender right's sake, I have no problem with more female bosses though, and there are plenty moving up the ranks to be there in several years' time.
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To wrongly generalise that men are driven by money, while women have different less materialistic goals, is itself a way of continuing and strenghtening these misleading and wrong stereotypes.
Some men are driven by money, and some are not, the same goes for women. The reason so many men work in the City is different - old boys networks, sexist hiring practices and an overly macho environment etc
The financial crisis was caused by greedy men, yes, but that does not mean that the natural charecteristics of men are to blame, to continually bring up all these apparent differences in men and women is divisive and not helpful in the fight for equality
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Robert,
Why don't you produce another article which pays the blame of the financial crisis on the irresponsible RICH.
As many posts have pointed out it's not gender specific as there are many examples of women acting in irresponsible ways.
However, of all the people cited above as being the fault - thay all have one common thred - they are very rich people.
Whether it be a rich civil servant who was asleep at the wheel, or a rich banker who manipulated the system, or even a rich politican who didn't legislate for it.
Not one person listed as part of the problem has been an 'ordinary joe bloggs'. No matter which political background the comment has come from - they have all blamed the rich.
Interesting that - and who is telling us they can fix it all? - ah yes, that would be the rich.
So does the system that allows such disparity in wealth assist in achieving stability?
I would suggest definitely NO.
These are the lines that need drawing - not between men and women, adult and child, black and white - but RICH AND POOR.
When are the rich all leaving? Since we raised the income tax rate I have been waiting at Heathrow every day to see all the top hats flying out in their droves - strangely I have seen none.
Maybe we need to raise it even more...
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I've nothing against women working, but contributing nothing to the credit crunch? How do you think an asset price bubble is generated? Over zealous and irrational buying activity, of houses this time, maybe? Who's wife doesn't fancy a bigger house? And let's not forget all those nice ladies who sell mortgages for a living.
Sounds like sexism? Our politically correct man made law surely favours property against diamonds as a girl with childrens best friend.
C'mon, is your purpose part of a feminist positive action agenda?
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One person writes the most sexist article ever. Men retaliate by saying the complete opposite. Feminists then join the board and take those posts seriously, triggering an all out war between men and women.
Humans these days are so funny.
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I find this article to be offensive and dangerouse. Many of us (Men) do not show the supposed male characteristics outlined and we don't get these sort of jobs, even if we wanted them, because we don't fit. Yet we still get tarred with the same brush when it comes to blame. I don't remember anyone saying a couple of years ago, arn't Men great, because of their naturally competetive nature we have this great expanding world economy with lots of cheep credit to encourage growth.I don't remember any Women handing back their credit cards and saying "No I don't want more shoes and a new car and a great holiday, on this cheap credit". Men gave the world budhism, meditation, CND, peace studies, yoga, pilates, Tai chi, millions of poems and stories and theater and film and health services and parliamentary democracy and charities... but of course the BBC won't be positively stereotyping and praising Men will they. If Women, ethnic minorities or gays were being negatively stereotyped like this, the author would get the sack.
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I have worked for a woman boss most of my working life and to be honest they listen and are more open to suggestions and tend to look at the pros and cons in more detail of any changes in working practice they don't allways look at the profit first as the reason for the changes but look at other things like how it makes staff happy to turn up for work
They also tend to get out of the office and go and do the job themselves to see what it is like to do the job and see for themselves what the changes mean to how the changes work for the benefit of everyone
where male bosses just take it that some consultant who as not done the job can tell them that there is more profit in the changes and will work regardless
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This is an interesting article from a woman's point of view.
There is no doubt that women do think differently and in the main are more cautious about decision making and the eventual outcome of that decision.
It is almost impossible for a woman to be taken seriously when dealing with a bunch of ment with a herd mentality and no grasp of the consequences of what they are doing.
Many women in this situation have given it up as a bad job and prefer to remain as onlookers while the men just keep messing things up and continue to stick together and make excuses for one another.
I cannot see this situation changing in the near future nore's the pity.
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Having met the greedy wives of bankers who will talk happily for hours and hours about how they are going to spend their husbands money and what on, they can hardly be portrayed as innocents. It is also insulting to the intelligence that women are somehow unaware, uninvolved or completely without blame.
As for Bankers, many of these highly paid bankers that I have met were given roles that were clearly defined in terms of the success criteria, they worked extremely hard to achieve those ends and felt let down by a lack of leadership, information, management, overview assessment from on high, where the superwealthy highly paid execs had taken their eye off the ball and then some. How can every employee in a busy, higly competitive environmet be aware of all of the risks involved? For many that wasn't their job, their job was to make hay.
However on the counter point, Bankers that criticise journalists or critics of them as being socialists should be aware just who is picking up the pieces of this world wide mess, the wider community, and no matter how unforseen, inevitable, or whatever people's culpability people have been they need to rescpectful of that, escpecially when many industries and businesses see no help from the government and at the moment from banks either, in fact the opposite in many instances.
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Think the Met Office retracting their wholly inaccurate forecast 'for a barbecue summer' this year, supports Roberts pointless article.
Because weather forecasts are produced by 'Weathermen', those evil, greedy sicophants. We need more 'Weathermwomen.
Then we will get better weather in the UK each summer.
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Seeing as Robert has lost interest in Economics....here is the point I was making in yesterday's blog, beautifully explained by this article.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8171116.stm
Capitalism is a reflection of the people that now reside within it - it is a facade, which looks really impressive from the outside, but in reality it's plastic made to look like solid oak. This story reflects the side of Communism which is rarely mentioned. All those workers out there who now have to pay for childcare, and all those environmentalists concerned about the huge journeys our food makes to get to our tables, all those commuter towns with no community, all those wasted frieght journeys moving goods up and down the country that could be produced locally - all created under our 'grand system' of Capitalism and thanks to the divison of labour.
I'm not saying Communism provided a political solution, but certainly the Economic one is one that benefits the majority - unlike Capitalism today which is merely serving a select few.
Sorry folks - you've all been living a lie - Capitalism is a big fake.
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Yes its all about testosterone and egos.
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Let's not forget Deanna Oppenheimer whose lending policies as head of the now defunct Washington Mutual bank in the states led to its ultimate downful. (She had of course jumped ship by then).
Ms Oppenheimer crossed the Atlantic to 'revitalise' Barclays' retail banking offering - on a vast remuneration scheme.
I suspect that the bean counters at Barclays are working overtime trying to cover up some of the mess that her lending policies have created before annoucing results next week.
Overall of course I agree with Robert that this is a male dominated problem, but let's not let all the women off the hook.
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Rubbish article. I would expect this kind of article from a deluded feminist with massive superiority complex about her gender. Last year I remember having read about a survey where London women said that any man earning less than 35k a year would be considered a loser. Women like to take credit for a man's success, they should be prepared to share the blame also. Whom all these greedy bankers were spending their money on? other men? the gay community is not that large!!. Age old triangle is, men love women and women love money and so men love money. Until women start looking beyond size of the man's wallet, we will never get real change.
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I'm a man. I'm not responsible for the credit crunch. So your premise that "men are to blame for the credit crunch" is incorrect. It is also offensive. Men all over the planet are battling to increase their empowerment. Why not be truthful, and write that "some" men (specifically in the banking sector, among others) have a restrictive and hubristic culture that created preconditions for the credit crunch.
Blaming men everywhere is wrong and contributes to a sex war feeling that damages relationships and promotes blame-gaming of innocent men. And most men are innocent of this charge. Please admit you are using catch-all slogans to chase after readers.
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What about all those "Blair Babes" in government? I did not see them question much. They just did what they were told.
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#JadedJean must be on holiday!
If you taked about Gender and Risk you might actually get somewhere.
Even when a Risk manager told Mr Mainwaring "we are doomed", no one listened.
40. At 11:28am on 29 Jul 2009, Robiati wrote:
I believe this is the dumbest article you've ever written Peston.
One of the key players in establishing CDOs based on mortgage debt was a woman. She and her colleagues may have pulled out of the practice early on, correctly concluding that they simply could not calculate the risks and therefore did not want exposure.
If it looks like s.1t, smells like s.1t, tastes like s.1t and performs like s.1t, then it's probably a financial product.
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HSBC Boss Stephen Green:
"if women were to participate in public life on the basis of adoption of traditional male modes of interaction, then humankind would have missed a profoundly important opportunity for growth."
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Id Mr Green proposing that 'we' have achieved a profoundly important opportunity for growth? Is this 'we' just HSBC and some other banks. I cannot see much growth elsewhere.
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Why do you always show the Lloyds building when reporting on the credit crunch? Lloyd's of London is not a bank, it's an insurance market. You love to show the Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe) too. Granted, it's an interesting building, but it does not house a bank, it's the home of Swiss Re, a reinsurance company. Oh and by the way, Canary Wharf is not the City either. More accuracy in your visuals please, and then we might trust your reporting more.
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Robert
You are on very dodgy ground when you start to genderise causes and effects or blame in this instance. We should also never ever advocate people for a role on gender only (or other classifications for that matter) other than on merit.
We really have to stop spinning simple rationales to what is a complicated and multifaceted scenario. Simple blame is easy but mostly wrong.
I would ask that as a 'bloke' you speak for yourself. As for the flippant 'boys toys' argument, to provide a good insight into how mathematics played a part in the economic downfall then I suggest read Felix Salmon's excellent recent article in Wired: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant.
You will actually see that the reason economic armageddon happened was that everybody involved played a part which is most facets of society itself.
One thing that has not been mentioned is that the underlying fact to all sub-prime loss started with people who should have known better. Because it starts with an individual default.
That doesn't mean the bankers aren't culpable. But it takes two to tango as they say. Just because the bank offers me a super duper monster-sized loan to buy a house I can't afford doesn't mean I take up the offer. Ditto for credit cards. (Hell I'm even agreeing in part with Writingsonthewall!)
In the end the economic downfall was caused by a large section of Western society itself (though not among them I will still have to pay for it).
There's a great line in the article above "People got excited by the formula's elegance, but the thing never worked. Anything that relies on correlation is charlatanism."
BBC Journalists take note........
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Though it's true that the bankers who've been at the centre of the action over the past decade have been stupid and greedy, the fact that this group is almost exclusively male isn't the problem.
You only have to compare the history of aviation and space exploration to find a male-dominated industry where the outcome has been excellent in terms of risk management. Mistakes have been made and lessons have been learned, the mindset of the aviator is taken into consideration in order to monitor and control risk at every level.
The ambition and drive to succeed could be seen as a male attribute but it doesn't have to be destructive. In any case, ambition isn't determined by gender, some women are as driven as some men. A female animal with young to protect is as single-minded as any male that is defending territory.
If scrupulous risk management methods were brought into banking, we would be able to develop a more secure future financially even if banking remained male-dominated.
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Sensationalist, speculative, lacking in fact. I think Robert Peston would be more at home in the tabloids than the BBC.
What about all the women married to the top bankers? Are these not greedy individuals?
Utter trash.
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Mr Preston, I take offence at your statement that the banking crisis is a case of Men behaving badly. However, I do recognise your dilemma. People are starting to get bored of the credit crunch media hype and being the economics editor this is not good for your public profile. Nonetheless, this is no justification for downgrading the quality of debate on the causes of the credit crunch to some sensationalist twoddle. The credit crunch can not be attributed to one group of individuals, it is a cultural problem than spans sexes, races and ideologies. It is not just down to men!
Yes it is fair to say, in the UK, the handful of top people from the various banks, regulatory authorities and treasury were men, however, each of these organisations pride themselves on being equal opportunity employers and hence also employ a number of senior female staff who arent entirely blameless. Also, lets not forget that we as the public need to shoulder some of the greedy charges too, and guess what 50% of us are women. To say its all mens fault is absolutely absurd!
There were plenty of high flying female bankers involved structuring CDOs prior to the crunch, in fact I know of one investment bank where in this part the organization women outnumbered men. Whilst there are less women operating at the C-level than men, believe me, women have the same hunger and ambition as their male counter parts and are just as greedy when it comes to achieving their performance targets as men. I have never met a women in business who is less ambitious then their male counterparts, they are often more ruthless.
So not only is your argument faulty on this aspect, but also, whilst I admit I dont have all the facts and figures at hand, I am sure that the proportion of men and women involved in taking on sub-prime mortgage debt was pretty equal (given that most people buy houses as couples). This is of course, unless you are saying that women lack the ability to speak up for themselves when taking out such loans. Equally, I am sure that women, just like men, have been involved in maxing out their credit cards on unessential luxuries.
Finally, lets not forgot who in the 1980s opened up the city to free market capitalism, was Margaret Thatcher not a women?
You comments are as equally as absurd as blaming a failure in midwifery, primary education or social care on the fact that they are predominantly female dominated organisations. Can you even visualise a situation where the BBC might publish such an article? An equally absurd, and misjudged statement would be to say that the economic failure of some African states is because they are governed by black people.
Such generalisations show complete lack analytical rigour and guide serious debate completely off track. It annoys me when the media feel it is acceptable to publish such ridiculous commentary, blurring two completely separate issues in order to sex up a story and spark a debate.
You cant blame an entire gender for something, just because a handful of key people happened to be the same sex.
Women played their part in the credit crunch, just as much as men.
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RP: The financial engineers who packaged up poisonous subprime debt and mis-sold it as AAA solid gold: they were long of Y chromosomes.
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'Financial engineers'. Is that a profession or have I missed a euphemism? Are these the same engineers who engineer pecuniary advantage? (Theft Act). Did these same engineers conspire with the Rating Agencies on the AAA rating and is it illegal? If so, will there be lots of trials?
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What sexist claptrap. That rings about as true as the following anecdote,
In a world run by women;
The law would be what we meant it to mean, not what it actually says, Women would always be innocent (because it's always the mans fault)
Sexism and discrimination would be completely overt and accepted (provided it was directed towards men),
Rehabilitation and "paying your debt to society" would be outdated concepts (remenber when we visited my parents back in 1981 and you....?"
Divorce laws would remain as they are
The UK would fully back Mugabe, Milosovic and Osama Bin-Laden because "no matter what we swear we'll do next time and no matter how bad they treat us, we can't understand why we always end up with a wrong-un."
The FTSE100 would be formed on the basis of logo choice and colour coordination rather than performance
Capital Punishment would be reintroduced and carried out according to the phases of the moon.
Astrology would be a recognised science.
Toxic debt and the sub-prime market would still exist, but at least the share bonuses would have been more evenly distributed (amongst the women, let the men fend for themselves).
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123 Wholly agree with you on this point, and it's bearing on the accuracy and relevance of the content of the article.
Been discussed before, when it appeared inappropriately, quite heatedly.
Typical BBC use of imagery and spin, just look at the Apprentice opening sequences and in programme sequences. All of it completely out of order geographically.
More like a crooked cab drivers short cut thru London with the Meter running.
Feel sorry for people from the regions, when they visit London for the first time and realise that all these 'iconic buildings' are nowhere near each other and as you say not involved in the paricular industry the BBC relates them to.
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Robert, I'm afraid you've let slip your political leanings with the comment "of course they had their moment in the sun in respect of responsibility for a recession with Margaret Thatcher's economic contraction of almost 30 years ago." Many people would attribute that recession to the need to restructure the British economy and rebalance political power between elected politicians and union bosses. Only a person with a certain political view point would make your comment.
I'll be interested to see if the BBC moderator allows this comment.
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Even if you do successfully argue that men at the top were single-handedly responsible for the crunch, I could argue it was the same men and their male ancestors who generated the infrastructure and financial success of this (and every other country) in the first place, so you have to take the bad with the good.
It's not worth whining about anyway, we're not all going to starve to death or anything, it just means some of us haven't got so much spare cash to spend on rubbish that we don't really need in the first place.
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Nice try Robert but it takes two to tango.
Buying houses - women's idea.
Consumerism - fuelled by women.
All funded and signed off on by men if the people at the top who make the policies are men.
I guess that a sign too of what men want; a woman and they still don't know how to do it without it costing the Earth.
Men may seem to be in charge but clearly and rightly, women are the superior sex.
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There are very few 'Top Jobs', elbowing a few men out and replacing them with token women will not help the problem of women being low earners one bit. As most working women are on or very near to minimum wage, increasing it 15% year on year for the next 10 years would at least start to break the differential.
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Mr Peston, I have long been a fan of your and your blog, but this time you seem to have missed a few very important players in your analysis, this is not like you, and I am disapointed.
In naming the participants of the collapse you seem to have forgotten the rating agencies! I seem to remember a prominent female boss of one such agency.
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What has happened to the oh so insightful Robert Peston of a few months ago??
Have the scoops dried up, now that Labour ministers no longer have a need to leak information to you?
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It takes two to tango, as they say.
Why not blame it on the selfish genes?
A more considered view would take a step back, and try analyse the system as a set of agents with tendencies to act in certain ways.
alternatively, how about this:
men + money + fast car + big house = choose a good mate(s) & lots of children & genes well looked after
women + rich man = nice things & lots of children & genes well looked after
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This is another of those white-male-on-a-guilt-trip articles that crop up every so often. While people are quick to apportion part of the blame over the credit crunch on male psychology, I don't remember men getting the credit when things were going well.
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more whimsy from the business editor..... the dumbing down of the BBC continues. How about a blog about business sometime?
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A bit simplistic - surely the point is that male/female behaviour is a bit like a Venn diagram so there are some women who also behave in a status-measuring way about things, ironically this then means they are the women who go up the ladder or push their men to. Probably fair to say that extreme agression and competitiveness tend to be shown by more men than women. Problem is you can't change the system without getting to the top and you can't get to the top in finance without showing these characteristics or at the very least one daren't question them - somehow we need to get a different chicken into the chicken and egg problem. Imagination needed
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We could start by putting a woman in charge of the London Stock Exchange
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124. At 2:06pm on 29 Jul 2009, Rugbyprof wrote:
"(Hell I'm even agreeing in part with Writingsonthewall!)"
You're on a slippery slope there RugbyProf....
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What facinates me is how many (I presume men) assume that the rabid consumerism comes from women (Handbags etc.)
What about those fancy gadgets fellas? - or maybe football tickets / shirts and trips to Moscow / Instanbul to watch European cup finals?
the pattern of male consumerism is different in that they tend to buy less - but more expensive, whereas women tend to buy more but cheaper.
Of course there are always exceptions, but I sincerely hope most of the comments above are tongue in cheek and are not serious suggesting consumerism is a female issue.
More to the point - is Robert under the thumb at home? Did Mrs Peston supply the incentive for this story - or has she actually got hold of his laptop and written it herself!
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~48 great link - Peter Schiff is the man. If you haven't yet seen it see his TV appearance against Art Laffer on youtube before the crunch - priceless.
Rather than gender I see personality type being a major player in all this. From Myers-Briggs I would be fascinated to see how many in banking are -STJ or -NTJ.
Wrintings on the wall - I would have been disappointed if you hadn't used this to advertised the economic benefits of communism - just like the USSR..............................
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If house buying is fuelled by women, why is house ownership by women significantly lower than house ownership by men?
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144. truths33k3r
Ah yes - because unlike politicans I am consistent.
No out of control consumerism in the USSR - a system which was pilloried as being backward at the time.
....oh how the tables have turned. All that Capitalist growth was fake and the only way out of the downward spiral is more bubbles.
The red flag was the anthem of Communism, maybe Capitalism should be attributed with it's own anthem - "I'm forever blowing bubbles'
...."and then like a dream, they fade and die' - appropriate is it not?
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Just two words - Margaret Thatcher.
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Mr Peston, how about you spend more time actually analysing the reasons for the financial crisis rather than trying to sensationalise the crisis through controversial articles like this?
Perhaps your readership is diminishing as people get fed up of reading the same over and over again. But this is not the Daily Mail so please think of an original way of reporting the economic situation, not merely picking a controversial topic to explain it. The reasons for the wage and power gap between men and women are as complex as the reasons behind the financial meltdown - but arguing that they are linked without any real evidence is not an impressive form of journalism.
Bring back Evan!
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146 writingsonthewall
As a Hammer I take exception to the hijacking of our anthem for Capitalism.
West Ham have a well respected, long term and consistent track record of acheivement.
Nothing like the Boom and Bust of the economic cycles of the last 100 years.
Oh, hang on a minute, quite a good comparison actually.
But please leave the Hammers out of this arguement, we've enough problems without being blamed for or associated with the biggest economic depression for 100 years.
Up The Hammers!
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Someone once said:
What did Hitler & a woman who stayed at home & had twelve children have in common?
Answer: they were both aiming at world domination, but it is the woman who will succeed!
Why? well try reading 'The Selfish Gene' by Dawkins & the masses of associated literature.
most commentators are obsessed by the markets, men & wealth, however the one who wins the (human) race is 'the last one standing'
That wouldn't be Hitler's offspring (so far as we know he didn't have any); but that Frau with the 12 children (best choice mainly boys since they can have dozens of children)' well forget those 'glass ceilings' she is in with a chance
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146. At 3:13pm on 29 Jul 2009, writingsonthewall wrote:
"No out of control consumerism in the USSR - a system which was pilloried as being backward at the time."
It is very hard to have consumerism when all that is in the shops is size 7 wellies because that was what the central bureau decreed should be produced.
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The dealing floor...a female free zone, a bear pit brimming over with testosterone... a frenzy factory...it would never have been invented by a woman...they would have invented something more intelligent!
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Dear Pestilence Peston.
What about all the woman whose clothing buying, here today gone tomorrow antics have driven the consumer credit bubble ? Are they and their store cards, credit cards, remortgaging antics not even partly responsible ?
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Mr Preston, you asked for thoughts as to how, as you put it, the City of London's male closed shop can be smashed. Heres an idea for the Treasury Select Committee enquiry: give couples the opportunity to decide whether it is the father or the mother who takes advantage of whats left of the 9 months maternity leave after the child is born.
At junior levels (i.e. graduate entry), the city is not a closed shop to women, even at senior levels it isnt, however I agree that there is a lack of senior female candidates for the top roles.
I am 28 and men and women in my generation are paid the same, treated the same, and sexism is not an issue (contrary to the some of the rubbish you may read about in the press). The reason why there are not many women in C-level positions is because a huge proportion of women leave firms for extended durations when they reach middle management in order to raise their family. I cannot blame them, unfortunately, couples have little choice about who looks after the child in the early days because only women are offered lengthy maternity leave. If, like in Sweden, couples could choose who takes the leave, then far more senior women would remain in work whilst their male partner takes leave to raise the child. This would inevitably result in more senior female candidates, hence a more balanced boardroom. It is not rocket science.
Plenty of men would take advantage of this, as theres no longer a stigma about the stay at home dad amongst my generation. Not only does this help men to take a more active role in parenting, it also encourages women to see their careers through to the end. Two birds as it were.
The suffragettes had a point back in the beginning of the 20th century, a hundred years have now passed, things have changed for the better, lets move on from blaming men and start helping both sexes achieve the social balance required such that we can all achieve what we desire both at work and at home!
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I have yet to meet a lady who did not have the decency of minding her own business regarding my income and outgoings. Female=Ruthless/non too emotional and charming and Male=aggresive/emotional and insecure due having a ruthless mother, we would rather play with our toys and brag about our big boy rather than have to admit our mothers cut it off a long time ago.
Targets, targets, targets, it would have made little difference having more women at the top.
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Wrong,wrong, wrong. These ideas are not just a slap in the face for feminism they are plain wrong. Many may imagine that by promoting the cause of women in this way they are striking a blow for feminism, in fact they are undermining any idea of sexual equality. Gender equality rests not on an acknowledgement of gender differences but rather a recognition that once physical differences are discarded men and women are far more similar than different. Peston's speculation is as he himself admis no more than hack journalism, claims about women being more risk averse are not only generalisations so gross as to be irrelevant and inapplicable but moreover can swing the other way. The theory goes like this men are more likely to take risks but at the same time are more likely to generate short term profit, thus the theory legitimises sex discrimination in both directions, from here it is just a short step to claims that women are more naturally emotional and empathetic and therefore make better teacher/nurses and worse businessmen.
Mistaken assumptions about gender differences have always been the means through which sex equality has been suppressed, feminism by contrast responds to the increasing evidence that there is far more difference amoung the different sexes than there is between them. If Peston feels that we ought to have more risk averse people in the city perhaps the solution is just to recruit these type of people, in practise they will be evenly distributed across the genders.
Moreover, the fact that the credit crunch was driven by risk taking men may well be a reflection not of their masculinity but rather of their personality. It was not so much the fact that they were men but rather that they were risk taking men, who thrived in the city's culture. Thus the fault lies not with the men but with the whole business culture around the city, a reflection of the proliferation of capitalist rather than communal values. Thus I feel that we must all men and women as a society take responsibilty for the crunch, rather than pinning the blame on a few bankers/politicians, tempting though it may be, we ought to acknowledge that as a collective we subscribed to and participated in a misguided economic system. Women as much as men fuelled the growth in personal debt and engaged in "retail therapy".
To conclude, it is evident from day to day life that one should not pigeon hole people on the basis of their sex. Women are not emotional, weepy, maternal types, men are not agressive, violent, sex machines. Both personality types occur in both genders but neither are more than tiny minorities. In reducing men and women to these stereotypes Peston commits the modern blunder and in so doing does a great disservice to the cause of female emancipation. The emancipated approach would be to acknowledge that risk taking types made a dispropotionate contribution to the credit crunch recruit more risk averse types in order to compensate, all the time disregarding people's gender.
All of that is not to say that there is not institutionalised gender discrimination throughout the labour market, but this discrimination is based on a misguided application of halfbaked theories about gender differences.However, a recognition of the overwhelming underlying similarities between the two sexes as opposed to any sort of discrimination or some hack journalists assertion of gender differences is the real solution to this problem.
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149. islider55
Seriously - what are the chances of that? A hammer fan - are you sure you don't mean a 'hammer and sickle' fan?
Absolutely classic - and a very fitting analagy with the booms and busts of the hammers.
Maybe the Economists have got it wrong, and instead need to be taking their Economic indicators from the form at Upton park.
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149. At 3:24pm on 29 Jul 2009, islider55 wrote:
"But please leave the Hammers out of this arguement, we've enough problems without being blamed for or associated with the biggest economic depression for 100 years."
For the economy I could forgive the Hammers - but not for Lee Bowyer.
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'But I would observe that - in my experience - men are more prone than women to simply run like a train at the goal, and never mind who's flattened along the way.'
I'm not certain the issue is gender so much as it is about approach to the education of boys.
It is yet one more argument against the obsession with rugby at school.
If, instead, these boys were handed an orchestral instrument, a set of golf clubs, and a schedule that began with singing in choir every morning, they might learn:
1. That the process of learning a skill well requires humility and patience(items one and two), and
2. That real success often involves cooperative effort in pursuit of a objective and higher common goal--i.e., a moving performance of a Tallis motet.
What if our future titans of business were trained in this fashion?
Add in daily swimming or cross-country running for physical exercise; and make the boys carry their own clubs on the course(and caddy for the grown-ups), and they'll get plenty of exercise.
And, they won't need knee surgery in their early 40's!
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151. truths33k3r
True - but surely the problem there is the 'decree' and not the lack of choice (especially as I am a size 10)
Choice is vastly overrated - it wastes time and energy as most human beings spend half their lives dithering over choice. If you have ever been clothes shopping with your wife / girlfriend - then you will know what I mean (if you're a woman then you probably won't get it)
I've switched my energy supplier 5 times in the last 3 years. What a complete waste of time and effort.
That is the price of choice.
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Robert
Your absolute right women are still discriminated against, as post 116 points out " Yes its all about testosterone and egos"
Several bloggers comments confirm that opinion too.
I have been to meetings ( normally time wasting 95% male dominated waffle clubs) where i was expected to make the tea and shut up, neither of which i do well.
Most women multi task, are responsible for their own household's budget, do think about the consequences of their actions, don't start wars and don't have time to twitter on blogs.
Would women in top positions have prevented the credit crunch? No.. only effective regulation and competent leadership would have.
Could women help get us out of this economic mess? Yes we normally have to clear up after the mess men make.
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When I taught a class of gifted Year 6 (10-11yrs)I remonstrated with the boys over their underwhelming attitude to demonstrating English skills in the run-up to SATs.
They waved towards the girls in the class, diligently working at their computers,wholly on task.
'They'll do it because you tell them to. We'll do it if we see the point. We'll employ them to do the writing!We'll make the money.'
The last I heard their (the boys') companies were doing very well. I feel we need some changes a wee bit before they are introduced to the corporate world!
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158. At 3:46pm on 29 Jul 2009, truths33k3r wrote:
For the economy I could forgive the Hammers - but not for Lee Bowyer.
Lee Bowyer? - he is merely a slowdown in growth
Kieron Dyer is a full blown 1929 style depression.
When we analyse overpriced assets - he must be 100 times worse than my house!
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In an unrelated story (its about business...) I notice that Microsoft and Yahoo have finally got an agreement to combine their search facilities giving them a 30% margin of the US search advertising market (Google has 65%) - I assume user figures/searches will match the advertising revenues.
This leads to an interesting question following the collapse of the banks and them being 'too big to fail' - should this be applied to other crucial industries? What is the deemed element of being too big to fail - can we let Microsoft fail? Admittedly the 90%+ of work computers operating its software wouldn't switch off overnight but when the world becomes reliant on one company for so much (yes, there are alternatives but nothing viable to replace microsoft overnight) - what about Google? Is that now too big to fail? At what point does a company pass the barrier that it would require a bail out should things go wrong (and now the precedent has been set...)
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~160 writingsonthewall
Despite the downsides to choice, I would rather have that choice than it being made for me.
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"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it. Just so long as I am the dictator."
George W. Bush
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somebody at the top of the class got it wrong big time,I did my very best to stop my man from building an extension that doubled the size of our cottage! taking away space needed for me to grow veg and putting up our rates not to mention fuel bills! did he take notice of this person from Venus no he comes from mars a million miles from were i am!!!
3 years ago I said the world had gone mad houses the price of antiques wages off the scale. Give me the job of chancellor I cry but no because it would take a man from mars to put me there, and after all your from another planet aren't you.
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I usually go elsewhere to read unsubstantiated, sweeping generalisations, but Mr Peston seems to be providing them this time. Please take lessons from Rory Cellan-Jones on quality journalism.
I do heartily agree with the commenter who experimented with changing the word 'man' for 'Jew' - the article is sexist and offensive. If you can substantiate your claims with evidence that men *did* cause the credit crunch, then that is not sexism, but as it is, your article is poorly supported, sexist and debatably in violation of the NUJ's code of ethics. Specifically that (from http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=174):
A journalist:
2. Strives to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed, accurate and fair
10. Produces no material likely to lead to hatred or discrimination on the grounds of a persons age, gender, race, colour, creed, legal status, disability, marital status, or sexual orientation
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164. Horned_Devil
A very valid point.
The rise and rise of international corporations means that eventually (if we're not there already) when a huge company fails (lets say a Enron style fraud) - it won't just bring down a region or country - but the complete world!
If you take notice, the recession is actually providing the situation where large corporations are eating up smaller ones, reducing competition and in the case of HBOS / Lloyds - they've overriden competition policy!
The point regarding system failure is a very valid one - everything will soon be running under the same software and it's only going to take some clever North koreans to find a hole and we really be going back to the dark ages.
....and I haven't even got onto the possibility of an EMP strike from the sun dibilitating all our chips....
Such is the arrogance of 'modern man' (or woman)
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Robert Peston became a well know name at the start of this credit crunch with insightful reporting.
As time has gone on I have got mightiliy sick of his celebrity chasing.
I am sick of you on the radio and you have now resorted to writing this sort of trash worthy of the Daily Star.
The sooner this financial crisis is over the better so we don't have to hear/read your ever more stupid opinions.
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165. At 4:14pm on 29 Jul 2009, truths33k3r wrote:
~160 writingsonthewall
Despite the downsides to choice, I would rather have that choice than it being made for me.
....ah but does the planet Earth agree with you? (and I mean the planet, not the people on it)
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the top women i have met are more macho than the men( and several much more impressive),nicola horlick didn't see things coming any more than the next man ..or woman!
A bit more of a mix would be a good thing but 'animal spirits' can be male or female
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Interesting that you say you may be on dangerous ground making this comment. I would think that you are on very safe ground if you are blaming men. It would have been dangerous if you had blamed women.
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#164 It is when the impact of the company's (with the banks it was the whole industry) fall puts the whole economy at risk. The damage it may cause is a lot more costly than keeping it afloat. There are alternatives to Microsoft and Google like companies, failure of those types of companies may indeed actually benefit the whole in the long run,I am not convinced that they would be saved from failure.
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...yeah - all you hypocrites slagging off Robert for being 'Daily Star' or 'Daily mail'
....you're all still here reading it aren't you?
You're like people who watch bad programmes on the TV just so you can complain about them.
Get a job - and a life while you're there.
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The reason you're not finding them is because you're looking in the wrong places.
All those women who racked up massive debts on their or their husbands credit card in the high street living well beyond their means and buying what they could never really afford are as much to blame for the situation we're in.
That's not to say it's only women who are guilty here, but my point is I know of just as many women who are guilty at the bottom for the situation we're in as there are men at the top.
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Today's blog doesn't suprise me, its long been obvious that its male competitiveness that is to blame for the current financial mess we find ourselves in...but can they help it? Perhaps its all down to their hormones. Check out this research paper titled: 'Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor.', Coates JM, Herbert J (2008). http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/publications/pubInfo.php?foreignId=pubmed%3A18413617
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174. paul4u
Aren't you basing what you say on how Google and Ms are now? What about when every operating system is a Micrsoft one and the only way to search the whole of the internet is through Google?
If Microsoft went bust (and don't laugh, if I had said the same about HBOS 4 years ago you would have laughed in my face) - then how are you going to get security updates and patches for your banks operating system?
Ms code is restricted (i.e. not open source) and therefore the collapse of that company would be far greater then a bank failing. Microsoft practically is the industry - whereas at the moment, no bank is in such a position - even the largest, Citigroup.
Remember that Tony Bliar got into bed with Microsoft to provide the operating system for many public bodies. It wouldn't just be the private sector that would be in jeaporday.
The (a) Government would be forced to save the company.
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174 and 178
And don't forget that we are slowly moving to a cloud environment - the collapse of a large cloud operator (eg Google with their office cloud offerings) would wipe out companies overnight...
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"the simplest way of putting this is that I know very few women who measure their success in life by the size of their respective bank balances"
Then, I suspect you know very few women Bobby boy.
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To those of you moaning about womens propensities for handbags and shoes get a grip and look at your car(s)/ boat / tool shed / music / booze /gadget collection(s). It the same impulse focussed on different subject matter, and I'm not sure which is more useless and/or superficial! And for those of you who then try to justify that these things add value because it/they are useful rather than just accessories, you are still having yourselves on.
In business, the same impulse buying / decision making is justified by complex spreadsheets, endless meetings, group think and hubris but by and large, you still end up with a shed full of tools that come out of the box once a year (or depending on your bias - a wardrobe full of occasionally worn shoes)
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174
By your analysis the car industry shouldn't be saved - all it did was cost jobs - and yet saved it was (to an extent)
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Almost everything done in the world is done by men. Women mostly choose to define as unimportant anything that requires energy and competitiveness. Those who do participate in such activities do so half-heartedly and then attribute their lack of success to prejudice. If they do succeed, their weaknesses are similar to those of men. In politics, consider Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi. What desirable feminine qualities did any of these bring to their work?
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#180
I don't think anyone who chose the name 'superjimbowen' is going to give a balanced view on this subject of the sexes.
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Brought out a few critics and sterotypical comments from a number of people drawing from their "own experiences" on this one Robert - you either wanted to get the comments up on your blog or really did not think this one through.
Big day tomorrow with a lot of companies reporting in London so I am sure you can get back to some serious business.
Not wanting to forgo the opportunity to make a comment. Observations of both male and female colleagues, children, wider family, friends here in the UK and elsewhere and indeed myself brings the issue down to one simple calculation: How much does an individual want something in comparison to the competition? Then the most determined with the most appropriate resources tends to win. Given the chance the looser calls foul and looks to blame others for their own failings.
As frustrating this current financial mess is, and as much as you and others seek to blame one group or another for the position there are some winners and some loosers - move on - lets get on with the next round!
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Unless I'm very much mistaken Iceland's government came to the same conclusion and put females in charge of the nationalised banks there...
It's an interesting bit of 'hack psychology' and I'm sure will be well worthy of academic research in the next few years. I don't have the answers, but this is made for cross-disciplinary research.
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178. At 4:45pm on 29 Jul 2009, writingsonthewall wrote:
"Aren't you basing what you say on how Google and Ms are now? What about when every operating system is a Micrsoft one and the only way to search the whole of the internet is through Google?"
Would this not be good from your perspective as we would not be burdened by choice?
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SEXUAL DIMORPHISM: IT'S MORE THAN SKIN DEEP
It seems that Robert Peston isn't quite willing to state the facts of the matter when it comes to sex differences in intelligence and personality. The facts of the matter are that Natural Selection has made the sexes different in a number of ways and these show up not just in phenotypical dimorphisms like height and muscle mass, but in IQ and it's components.
There are twice the number of males with IQs of 120 as there are females and beyond that the ratioj just keeps increasing.
Something odd has happneed to psychology as a profession in recnet decades, as 80% of it is now female.... This makes sense when one considers how behavioural work has been marginalised over the last 30 years or so in favour of 'cognitivism'. This is not good I suggest, for anyone.
Whilst males (at the higher end of the ability distribution) are better spatially than females, and females are better verbally than males (this shows up in all the tests internationally, school tests and psychometrics), the difference in aptitude and interest also shows up in subject selection from A level onwards.
In addition, when it comes to the Personality Disorders (Axis II, Cluster B especially using the USA system), there's a 75:25 male:female split in the sexes when it comes to Anti-Social Personality Disorder (which includes psychopathy) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder which it's very similar to, and this ratio is reversed for teh sexes for Histrionic and Borderline Personality Disorder. It's widely believed that the Financial Service sector has more than it's fair share of APD and NPD where having such self-centred, ruthless dispositions seems to confer an advantage.
It looks like both intelligence and personality has a very large genetic component.
In short, there's an awful lot of nonsense talked in our Liberal-Democracies about equality, largely based on ignorance of statistics and parameters of normal distributions, and nonsense usually leads to trouble.
Anyone insterested can follow this up in more detail in past Flanders and Newsnight blogs and elsewhere.
Anarchism has been busy wrecking Liberal-Democracy for some time....
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174 178
If such as such is the case then they may be kept running, looks like a chink in the armour needs sorting out before it becomes a real issue.
The car industry has downsized capacity, but technique and skills need to be retained, the car industry will recover when the economy recovers (it may take a long while though) I hate to see unemployment but the sad truth is that it is more cost effective to keep people on the dole at times than it is to create new employment, my roots are from an industrial city, (an industry now no more) where there were always the good times followed by the bad times for work, Marx's theories in Capital covers the issues very well (Marx is noted for being the first person to actually right it all down, he was a materialist and not an idealist as many think) Maybe this government and manufactures can get together and build some sturdy transport for the military soon. That is no relief if one has a mortgage to sort out though. There really ought to be some relief for those who do.
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whilst we're on the subject of hack psychology you have to ask why men behave like they do - and a big part of the answer is sexual selection (i.e. women).
so even though they may not be in the office they still have an effect!
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Quite possibly the most idiotic, sexist, dishonest, offensive, inaccurate post I've ever seen on any bbc blog ever.
Most points have been covered quite brilliantly by others, but one that has been missed of course if the failure of female politicians which Mr Peston seeks to deny.
The followng is take from Angela Eagle's wikipedia article:
"In April 2008 Eagle took part in a debate in Parliament on the UK economy in which the Liberal Democrats tabled a motion suggesting that the country was facing an 'extreme bubble in the housing market' and the 'risk of recession'. Eagle responded stating "Fortunately for all of us...that colourful and lurid fiction has no real bearing on the macro-economic reality." [2] In 2009 Jeremy Browne, who led the debate reflected on her comments, stating A year ago, Angela Eagles comments summed up the Governments delusional attitude. We had been warning for months that we faced a housing market collapse and a serious recession, but ministers did not want to hear it. Their failure to face up to reality left the country dangerously unprepared for the crisis that now confronts us."
So in summary, the most delusional, harmful attitudes which caused the credit crunch were held and expressed the most strongly by a female politician, not by any male. I.e. the exact opposite of what Mr Peston is suggesting.
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In the last ten years the only household things i'v bought is a kettle and iron. I was out voted on a 40inch plasma screen TV £2000, wood saw £4000, landrover £24000, trailer £3000, and at least £3000, more tools!! My house furniture was ready for the tip years ago and by the way I have had no kitchen sink for the past 2 years, so whats to complain about!! thank god hes not a football fan!! it could be worse.
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They are called psychopaths and they come in both genders only the male has many more and is the most dangerous. There is no credit crunch it is about the banks being allowed to hang on to as much money as possible and gain interest then lend little at a larger rate. Its a con and expensive one but one that most joined in. Buy house that are not worth what you pay for them because owning a home is making you middle class Thatcher was great in conning the class ridden Brits comes from trade but sends her kids to the best boarding school and tells people how she was cook and shopping this female worked it well. The men she had surrounding her are all mothers boys the British breed many of these look at her son. And then we had the Euro and the murdering of the miners and the unions and those who backed her, when she was doing this and the war and who got ride of her? The Tories the toffs the boarding school boys all from the same lodge for no other reason that they could not stand a woman any woman being in charge, you all forgot the word misogyny that is rife to this day in the Govenment or Britian. Who did she pick after he had been to the masonic lodge od the Blidburge Group for four days Mr Blair as he is more of a mothers boy than Brown he is his fathers boy. Obhama has been there as well just be fore he was given the chose place. In this Group there are male and female and they all have a common goal New World Order and this is what is the so called credit crunch about, give me control of world money and you can make all the laws you want. Nathan Rothschild one of the most powerful families in the world ask the BBC.
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Utter Tripe! check your facts 188 JadedJean
Wikipedia IQ tests
1940 preliminary tests yielded a slightly higher average IQ for women,
Other studies done in mid-nineties have concluded IQ performances of men and women differ little
1995 study performed shows no difference in average IQ between sexes.
Only one test reported men had slightly better IQs were than women.
One test reported men have slightly heavier brains than women, that must be due the tiny bit that wrongly informs them are superior beings.
Robert can you please get back to business tomorrow or i will explode.
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A few points Robert
1 - Your article assumes that bankers are pretty much entirely responsible for the financial crisis, and that the people who actually spent too much on their credit cards or defaulted on their sub-prime mortgages have nothing to do with it.
2 - Assuming that the commen "folk" getting in too much debt may have contributed I assume you belive that all these people are also men? That no woman has a maxed out credit card or a sub-prime mortgage? Perhaps it would interest you to know that most people with sub-prime mortgages were single females and couples, there were almost no single men, that means women are responsable for more than 1/2 of the mortgage debt, womem also have more credit card debt on average than men, so once again the levels would be there fault - unless you believe as you seem to imply that male bankers forced debt on people
3 - 1 in 10 bank directors is female, a low percentage I know but still do you honestly think that they had no say at all?
4 - All of the above information was obtained in less than 10 mins on a search engine, try doing a bit of research before writing your next blog.
Thanks
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A Cambridge University study has found a direct link between the amount of money traders make and testosterone levels.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7347894.stm
Could there be a connection here?
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#193
There is a lot of truth here, President Bush made no bones about representing his "own type of people" and a "New World Order" in some of his speeches.
Indeed prior to Bush and under Thatcher, here in the UK, the working classes were muzzled by being encouraged into taking on debt, owning a home, now they were put into where they no longer could afford to strike nor demonstrate for any effective lenth of time to protect what freedoms or rights they had. Yes, in the early days many prospered (good profits to be made stimulating up a housing market) and they have done very well, the desciples of credit were born to convert the masses, where are our freedoms now? Why does it cost so much for everything? Where is my national and cultural identity? Who is afraid of that big bad wolf called people power (called 'solidarity' in some quarters) they are now all too afraid and fearful to step outside in case they catch the flu or miss a mortgage payment. Anyway, all this CCTV we have, Police with guns and Tazors, Hoodies trying to make a point about being watched all of the time, economic issues that facilitate single parenthood (many of which there is an active father but wages earned would not facilitate good healthy living conditions for them nor more importantly that of the children if the relationship were declared, so no fathers name on the birth certificates in many cases, mothers saying that they do not know who the father is in order to provide that little bit extra to be spent on the children better quality food, utilities, clothes, shoes the tings that means tested benefits do not provide(many branded trainers are sold at heavy discounts so lets get that one out of the way) A culture of fear, fear fear being channeled into our homes via THE NEWS, the News focusing on International issues more than our real domestic issues, it goes on and on. A climate of fear, control.
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158 & 163
Cannot argue with either of your points, but where do you start and where do you finish? Could bore you for ages, but unfortunately I am going away for the weekend.
One tenuos link to the Credit Crunch would be our current owners and the former owners.
Two great examples of Iceland pre & post credit crunch, one an administrator for the creditors of the latter, a now failed Banker(Owner).
More than a coincedence?
Maybe Robert should investigate the relevance of 'Bubbles', the owners and the relative comparison to the last fifty years of western economies.
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Mr Peston. You have long been an oracle on all matters financial. You, like the bankers you have been so willing to critisize have just fallen from a great height. You know very little in terms of actual poicy making and the people who make the decisions that affect us all.Women were as implicit as men in desire for greater market share of everything. Perhaps in the majority of cases, men "carried the can" for any failure so you have accordingly pointed the finger in their direction . Women have been afforded massive legislative assistance in the last 20 years and accroding to the most recent polls are happy with their present standing in society. Attacking the role of men will not win you any brownie points with women- quite the reverse. My experience is that women want to fight their own corner without the assistance of self-appointed do-gooders like you. You are off-limits in this discussion which is not your territory and you have made judgements without appreciating the full picture.
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Robert,
What possesed you (a male) to write this article denigrating men in this fashion when we poor males are constantly being told (by the opposite sex) that behind every succesful man lies an equally good woman.
Shame on you and if your not careful you'll soon be writing a follow up article to say that you are in favour of men helping with household chores.
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good idea had the lot over to women, starting with government then down to banks etc, we men need a time out and i for one would relish the change to logical leadership in every thing.
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I think writingsonthewall @ 107 has identified the real issue here, that it's the RICH who can be blamed for the mess. The super league top earners are able to bully everyone into submission and no-one dares to contradict or question what they say. Only mealy-mouthed sycophants get their approval.
You could argue that the credit crunch was caused because men in banking weren't men enough and didn't face up to the senior bankers who led everyone down the slippery slope to ruin.
Safety records in aviation show that the more stroppy and insubordinate the junior pilots are the better. Quantas has a good record because their first officers aren't afraid to question a captain if they think something is wrong.
If the Treasury Select Committee wants improvements in banking they should reduce the pay of the top layer to weed out the psychopath.
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#194 moorlandwoman
You might want to re-read his comment and make sure you understand it before lashing out at a perceived slight.
He is making the point NOT that the average IQ is different, but that the distribution is different. Men have a wider and shallower normal distribution across the range of IQs compared to women.
As you;re fond of wikipedia, take a look at the "Sex And Intelligence" page, and this particular nugget -
"A 2005 study by Ian Deary, Paul Irwing, Geoff Der, and Timothy Bates,[16] focusing on the ASVAB scores of 1292 pairs of opposite sex siblings, showed twice as many males as females in the top and bottom 2% of scores, demonstrating a significantly higher variance in male scores. The study also found a very small (d' 0.07, or about 7% of a standard deviation) average male advantage in G (factor)."
He's not trying to say women are stupid. He's not trying to say YOU are stupid. He's trying to say that there are biological, psychological and behavioural differences between the genders, these are neatly ignored when convenient to prove discrimination against one or the other.
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The average man would be happy to remain in the 1st house he bought, wear the same pair of shoes till the damn things disintegrated, decorate just the once, have one set of cutlery, one set of plates cups saucers and no frilly/glittery bits in the house at all.
Women the superior sex when it comes to finance?
Dont make me laugh, they want it all and they dont care where the money comes from :-)
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#199
Relax, Relax, it is only a blog, a great place to bounce thoughts, ideas, get feedback at times and perhaps even learn a thing or two here and there. To play the devils advocate(and to take a beating without the pain we may get in the real world) It appears that all sexes are equally responsible. Some interesting research sites and views have been thrown in, Iceland appears to be taking some research in a serious way. Mind you Iceland is in a mess and to distract its population away from the recent past is a good idea. I wonder if getting females to run the show will make any things better in the long run? They are about to join the Euro so.........
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moorlandwoman (#194) "Utter Tripe! check your facts 188 JadedJean"
I'm afraid these are the facts. As I have said elswhere the pattern also shows up in Key Stage SATs tails for maths and English and do every year for well over a decae now, for about 560,000 pupils (at 7, 11, 14 and 15 - so that's well over 2 million each year). The IQ diference is not understood by enough people because many don't understand that the female IQ range is more conservative than the male (this has been known for decades). What matters is the tails here, particularly the upper tail in maths which correlates very highly with 'g'. It's why there are no great female mathematicians (e.g. Fields Medalists). If you look up the population data you'll find this is the case. This pattern can also be seen internationally in OECD PISA data. It's universal.
More people need to come to terms with these facts of life. Great efforts have been made to minimise these natural sex difference in both IQ tests and SATs (by feminizing some of the test items, and even the National Curriculum - many teachers know this) but the tail differences never go away, essentially because they're biological.
Please don't resort to abuse when told things you do not know/like as all of this is well documented now. Males tend to be good at some things, females others. There's overlap because sexual dimorphism is not absolute (see Prader scale) and there are anomalies(see CAH/NCAH - and some ethnic groups are more gender tilted than others cf. Ashkenazim and NCAH, CYP21 on C6p21).
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Gothnet (#203) Correct. There's a small mean IQ ('g') advantage to males too, but it's the tail issue which is critically important in this particular area of employment, as you correctly identify. It's the same in IT and similar professions.
To some of us, watching 'liberals' argue with the facts of life is one of the saddest signs of our most peculiar and self-destructive times. We also now know the important sex differences are probably more genetic than just hormonal. It is truly frightening the myths which some folk are emotionally attached to. As a consequence, many researchers don't bother trying to enlighten such people anymore, especially after the Summers/Harvard fiasco a few years ago (and Summers is just one case). It's political, it's not rational, and I suggest it's a good part of what led to the Credit Crunch as I've said elewhere.
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I don't care whether it are men or women who are wise and skillful enought to explain to other men and/or women in the UK that the life-on-debt party is over. Most people (men and women) have not understood yet.
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Actually Robert it is entirely a Womans fault for the Credit Crunch (Allegedly) ;-)
The tool for the Roll up of the Debt bubble was CDS's
CDS's hid the huge debt that lay on Balance Sheets that previously would of scared off Sovereign Funds (That massively invested in Western Banks and Investment Banks)
Blythe Masters invented them (a woman)
I noted that around about the time of the onset of the Credit Crunch that she was mentioned on Wikipedia as inventor of CDS's.......then in the Maelstrom of the Credit Crunch she was taken out of the Article about CDS's.
Oh....and she was a CFO at a Investment Bank (A role probably more important than the CEO as they give the Yay or Nay to Capital Expenditure.....or Big debt Bubbles)
So I don't think that the men are completely to blame. And my experience of High flying woman are that they are just as bad as the Men
Think Nicola Horlock. Oh.....and she lost a big wodge of cash in the Madoff incident.
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EVERYONE'S EQUAL...'AND THAT'S PERFECTLY RIGHT..'
FinanceGalatico (#210) "Blythe Masters invented them (a woman)"
Did she create Unit Trusts too ;-)
Are women responsible for leading people to believe that there are no group differences in cognitive ability or just one of the groups of 'useful idiots' deployed in a greater game?
Who led two ethnic groups in the USA (with a mean IQ 15, and 23 points respectively below the mean IQ of the dominant group in NYC) to believe that these groups had the numeracy competency sufficient for them to be able to grasp the fine details of discount mortages? Why were those people told that they were equals and smart enough to.....?
It's what people leave out of their thinking which is usually the best clue to how venal they really are. Sometimes, they just can't help themselves I'm sure.
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Aren't we all missing the point here, male or female, Maggie was absolutely right the City MUST regulate itself. It is anot just a matter of morals, it is an issue that morality in business can lead to better profits. Obviously business must make a profit, but when a company is sold part of the transaction and value is in the goodwill, that is largely the consumerbase. The fairer a company is to its clientelle the greater the Goodwill value will be, so that the concept of profit at any price is wrong headed. When the need for profit is linked to bonus and the bonus drives the profit, that is nothing more than greed and greed is not good. A hunger to do well is not the same thing.
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Errr (to paraphrase The Pester) - didn't a man get sacked from HBOS for being too risk averse? And was replaced by a woman?
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There are three issues to debate.
First -are women employed in the banking sector to the same extent as men? The answer is clearly - no.
Secondly - why not? I don't subscribe to the glass ceiling theory. Most women are less interested in Maths and Science than most men. That does not mean all women, but you won't find many women in engineering either. Men and women think differently - our brains are not wired up the same way.
Thirdly, if women were employed in the banking sector, would they have made such a mess of things as the men did? The answer is - yes. Mrs Thatcher, the only female Prime Minister, destroyed British manufacturing and ruined everything that was good about this country by sacrificing all to the God of Profit.
I can think of one woman in banking who proves my point. The previous Head of the FSA (Crosby, I think his name was) was forced out because of a whistleblower at the bank where he had previously worked. The whistleblower had done a risk assessment at the bank. He was forced to leave, I seem to remember, by a female who enthusiastically supported Crosby's stance that the bank was not taking unacceptable risks.
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Men stands for Massive ego no
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Generalisation are annoying and can easily become offensive!
At no. 45.
I am male, almost all of all the jobs I have applied for I have made sure I have 100% of the qualifications, there was only one position I applied for where I was missing one aspect of the position, and I felt that anyone who had all of the skills requested would be demanding double the salary offered, and so perhaps I would be the most qualified respondent.
In the small office I currently work there are 7 women working there. 4 of the 7 were significantly under qualified for their positions on starting their roles. For example
1. Joined as an IT technician with out any IT qualification and basic IT literacy.
2. The support receptionist is a non-native English speaker with no technician qualifications.
3. The Support Desk Manager had no managerial experience or technical qualifications on taking the role.
4. One of the sales staff is a non-native English speaker who had no sales experience prior to joining the company.
Of the remaining 3, I assume that the company accountant is qualified, the woman who writes product documentation is a qualified librarian (so a semi-related field), and I am unaware of the sales managers qualifications. They are all perfectly competent in their jobs, but in terms of your IBM statistics they are certainly dramatically opposed to the model you are suggesting.
I studied economics and I am aware that surveys and statistical analysis can easily be manipulated both consciously and unconsciously by the designer's bias. Open questions do not lend them selves well to statistical analysis and can easily be "interpreted", closed questions can force a respondent to answer in a way the surveyor requires. Further more it is easy to influence the "opinion" of the respondent by manipulating the situation of the survey.
Given my personal experience of the exact opposite of their findings I am obviously curious to find out why their statistical values are in direct contradiction to my experience. I could for example consider the possibility that they used their own job application information as the basis of their findings. If this is the case then there is a massive cause and effect assumption here, for example:
As we are aware few women have entered into engineering and IT education relative to men (the reasons are unimportant for the sake of this assertion), I would be surprised if it was not the case that the spread of applications at IBM meant that the majority of female applications were for sales based jobs, where as male applications would span sales, it and engineering more broadly. From my experience sales job adverts tend to have fewer recognised qualifications than IT or engineering roles. Essentially I would contend that your statistics may well not take into account that there was a bias in male applications towards roles which requested more qualifications. This may be easier to understand with some made up numbers:
Say there are 10 female applicant 8 go for sales jobs where there are no qualifications required 1 applies for IT where qualifications are required and 1 applies for engineering where qualifications are required. We also have 10 male applicants 2 go for sales roles, 4 go for IT roles, and 4 go for engineering roles. Now assume that none of the applicants have any qualifications.
You could argue that on average women only apply for jobs that they are 80% qualified for while for men it is 20%, and that men are happy to apply when they are under qualified and women are not. An alternative to this is that women prefer sales jobs and men prefer IT and engineering, and the level of qualification statistics is just a by product of this preference. HOWEVER, both suggested explanations are unproven, essentially the cause and effect are not necessarily linked.
A regular problem with statistical analysis is that people apply their own bias or agenda to the statistics. Out of curiosity I attempted to find the survey you alluded to, suggesting it is unpublished. Without viewing I cannot analyse if their methodology is flawed or an accurate representation, however, given my experience of generally witnessing the exact opposite to the extend that my natural assumption is that there is no gender bias and that overall it will even out between men and women, I am going to assume the survey is deeply flawed in establishing a causal link until I am able to view it and reassess otherwise.
It is ridiculous to use gender generalisations drawn either from the bulk of the population and apply it to a specific sub-set of society, just as it is ridiculous to use a specific sub-set of society and apply observations of their aspects to society as a whole. Doing so will not achieve anything in a Micro or Macro sense and potential further imbues bigoted stereotypes.
This article essentially poor. As has been regularly stated the problem was with extreme risk taking, this is trait is not inherit in all men in the same way that it is not devoid in all women. You might be able to prove something like 15% of men are extreme risk takers, where as only 5% of women are, but even so replace all the risk taking men with risk taking women and the effect will not have changed!
For Robert Preston's argument to be true he would need to prove that ALL women are more risk adverse than ALL men. I hope it is self-evident that this is untrue, but given this sexist article I am worried I might need to point out that there are plenty of women in extreme sports, who enjoy sky diving etc, and are clearly plenty of men more risk adverse than them.
Successful risk takers are likely to be prevalent at the top of finance no matter what, what is required is for the more risk adverse (be they male or female) to attempt to temper that risk (normally through constructive regulation) to make sure it does not get out of hand.
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TEH COST OF NARCISSISTIC RAGE
Many of our problems today occur because a) more and more people amongst us do not (can not?) look at the empirical facts in sufficiently fine detail to grasp what matters and b) narcissistically rage (throw hissy-fits) when their false assumptions are challenged by the facts, thus making more ratinal people back away to keep the peace. Whether such people see it or not, those comprising group a) amount to socio-economic subversives.
In my view (and many others in the field I speak from) this has all got to be dramatically reversed if we, in the anarchistic 'Liberal-Democracies', are to regain credibility in the world economy, as the facts are all out there for some in the ever more rational world elsewhere (particularly in the much larger PRC) to see, and at present, we are making outselves look incredibly stupid. GDP and mean IQ are highly correlated (see also OECD PISA).
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Please don't put all men in the category to blame for the so called credit cruch!! My husband is a hard working man with his own business who has struggled to find work to keep us afloat. While the conmen and women we call MP's and the PM are travelling around in private jets and large gas-guzzling cars we have to think twice about going out in our family car. When you see a grown man in tears over the fact his business is folding around his ears and he is asking his wife to work more hours to help, you know it's not every mans fault!! So please don't label all men thank you.
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The really bad news today is that house price inflation may be back but still won't be considered by the MPC when considering interest rates.
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YorksElaine (#219) "Please don't put all men in the category to blame for the so called credit cruch!!"
SOME(x)=NOT(ALL(x)) and ALL(x)=NOT(Some(x))
'Reasoning' (computing) is largely about frequencies, classes and the logical quantifiers. Behaviour is largely about genes, their expression, selection, and reinforcement.
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Robert
A big change occurred in the last decade in the business world when Personnel was replaced by Human Resources. I remember a joke question was put to HR consultants that made them squirm, and which they had no answer to:
What did Personnel do that was so bad, that their name had to be expunged from the business world?
The change was dramatic, almost like an overnight coup de etat. Private sector and public sector alike were subject to this tyranny. Along with it came aspirations of HR consultants to drive the business, be on the board and change of culture where once technical skills were a key driver of performance, these were replaced by soft behavioural skills.
In IT you were rewarded if you wrote competent software. Now if you are rubbish technically but are good at the behaviour bit you are well rewarded. As an ex HBOS employee I can tell you that brown nosing the management can be a very rewarding behavioural skill indeed.
So Robert your article does have a grain of truth in it, but the target is misdirected. The other aspect of the emphasis on behavioural skills is the pervading culture of always being positive. In banks like HBOS it would be impossible to carry out a function of regulating Risk competently, whilst being handicapped with a slogan of "always be positive".
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And it logically follows, at the risk of getting a nasty glare from my fiance, that it'll be men that sort out the credit crunch too...it's never been a system that works on small risk, is it?
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More women at the top of these financial sectors may be a good balance, yes - women on the whole are more risk adverse and think of the greater impact of their decisions. But, they are not going to get in unless they play by the same old established rules, and when some women get to the top on men's rules it is sometimes disasterous.
Some of the comments here are obviously from old bankers who's only contact with women is with their high maintenenace wives and wives' friends. Perhaps they should meet some real business women who are successful and have got there by playing by their own rules.
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Ahh
The old "men are to blame for everything" line .
It seems that men are a scapegoat for everything these days ,especially on the feminist run BBC .
Interestingly , a short Austrian chap with a little moustache ,in Germany , around 70 odd years ago started blaming one group of people for all the worlds ills , and look where that ended up !!!
True SOME men were to blame for the current situation (mainly because women crave more and more material possesions!!) , but it's mostly men that are affected by it .
It is a rare sight to see a woman selling "The Big Issue" !
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I have some sympathy with the 'men to blame' idea, however are we suggesting that post office workers, hospital cleaners, railway engineers, soldiers etc, etc are to blame for this financial mess ? Generic blame is facile - the guilty parties here are a definable group of bankers, brokers and regulators encouraged by our erstwhile chancellor.
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If women had been on top, we'd currently be bailing out the global shoes industry.
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187. truths33k3r
You can try and pick holes in my philosophy - but it's an uphill task for you.
There is a big difference between 'choice' and 'putting all your eggs in one basket'.
....which is illustrated by your point.
Having one internet provider / service / search engine etc. would be fine - if it wasn't then left to the whim of capitalism whether the service was actually available or not.
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60. At 12:15pm on 29 Jul 2009, ggaylmer wrote:
"Men are probably obsessed by the size of their salaries because rich successful men tend to attract and keep the most desirable women"
Yes - if you like your women plastic, fake and vacuous - that is true.
Now we know that all those Saint Tropez sun tans are going to turn into skin cancer - will men re-assess what is attractive?
Women such as this are like Capitalism itself, all ver nice in the short term, but not so nice when they start wrinkling up at 35 due to the damaged skin from make-up and over-tanning.
My lady rarely wears make up and looks as good in the morning as she does in the evening. However I have heard some 'desireable women' do not allow their partners to see their face until they have foundation on it.
....all a facade I'm afraid - and all facades eventually crack - just like the Economy.
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Well, I don't know where to start regarding putting the blame on the massive economic adjustment of 30 years ago led by Thatcher as a fault of women. Firstly, it was male led industry, commerce and unions since WW2 that failed leaving the country with abject inefficiency that just had to be dealt with in 1979 and largely male resistance that generated the conflict involved. Perhaps attempting to use that period as an example of a fault of a female and not being able to find a better one you highlight again that women generally have not influenced economic or financial affairs, for whatever reason.
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130. islider55
....the manipulation of the human mind is constantly bombarded with images to manipulate the mind - haven't you ever noticed that every time the news talks about 'Social work' the BBC puts up a picture of Baby P?
Association through imaging like this is also how advertisers have produced a generation of greedy consumers who have made 'need' and 'want' interchangeable.
...something which I'm sure you're agree is not good for society.
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yes i blame men for all the trouble we are in.even though they say that men and ladys pay the same tax if they are o the same rate of pay this is wronge also i am the mane bread winner in our house my husband being disabled but does my tax show this no it does not.i get no help with rent or council tax my husband only get d.l.a no other benifits that 180.00 a mth only.yet a male friend of ours get 3 times as much as me a month he gets half his rent paid half his council tax is paid for him all because he has 1 child at home.so this is a male world i work hard i pay my bills when i can but i still get no help were oh were is this thing that says we get the same.is there no help out there for us.no there is not.but if i was a him but not a her yes there would be.
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192. At 5:48pm on 29 Jul 2009, CITOLDUSO wrote:
In the last ten years the only household things i'v bought is a kettle and iron. I was out voted on a 40inch plasma screen TV 2000, wood saw 4000
4 grand for a wood saw???? Does it chop down rainforests or something?
I would stress that for anyone to spend 2k on a TV is a sign that you are replacing God with Simon Cowell as your deity.
I am proud of my small (18" - which to me is huge) TV. I get to see everything you do for a fraction of the price.
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194. moorlandwoman:
I wouldn't even bother - everyone knows IQ tests are no reflection on intelligence.
Try riding a bike around Oxford or Cambridge and see how many 'super IQ's' you nearly run over because they haven't grasped the concept of looking before they cross the road - despite every 5 year old child in the country knowing how to do it.
The same goes for every 'centre of inteligence' - i.e. the City, Parliment square etc.
I used to do exceptionally well in IQ tests when I was 10 - but I certainly didn't take that as a measure of my intelligence, especially as I managed to break my leg 'playing football in my bedroom'
- NOT intelligent behaviour.
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I conducted research on the credit crunch, banking and securitisation (the technical word for 'packaging up loans') for my doctoral thesis.
I can safely say that although women are a minority in banking they were present in packaging up mortgages, writing them, and checking the new securities before they were sold to investors.
I don't think Robert can claim that women were absent from the processes involved in 'packaging up loans' for resale. However, this perhaps raises more interesting questions as to where power resides in banking. Does it lie solely with the chaps north of the glass ceiling, or are they too detached to understand exactly what went on?
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Just remember folks.
It matters not whether the people at the top were male or female - when everyone acts like SHEEP then gender is irrelevant.
Herd mentality was the cause of the credit crunch. If you don't believe me watch 'Property snakes and ladders' where you will see plenty of Baa Baa's and wooly jumpers all diving into a market they know nothing about because they 'herd' there was profit to be made.
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Your comments above - "men behaving badly". what rubbish. Thatcher is to blame through and through. Thatcher encouraged the present consumer behaviour which grips this country. Growth, and all the addictions associated with it stem back to the Thatcher era. She encouraged right from the start. Obviously it existed to a point before hand, however, to quote her, a man is just not man until he has a car, is just one area of life now that can be seen through the generations. I am 25 and it sickens me how the older generations just cannot see how addicted they are to growth, greed, material possessions and energy! Everything is done through the consumption of energy, i.e. fossil fuel (because obviously wind turbines are awful and ugly and so just cant be used). It is only because of cheap fossil fuels, that our growth addicted lives can exist, fuelling expenditure and consumerism. This is the route cause of the credit crunch. This has nothing to do with males dominating politics.
However, having more women in politics and banking would probably help balance the state, however, this will have no effect on growth, lending, consuming and fuel consumption. There are far bigger issues going on in the world than whether or not it is women or men who are the cause of this recession. And if you think that the credit crunch will magically end our consuming lives can go back to the way they were and everyone can continue driving around in their posh cars and 4x4's buying flat screen tvs whenever they like, whilst having the latest iphone or whatever, you are more gullible than you think. This recession is just the beginning of a far greater thing - peak oil. This is going cause shock waves through our society far greater than the recession. And frankly - i cant wait.
I say, move out of the rat race and the hole that is London, get in the real world and start giving back to the environment rather than just endlessly consuming that which is not replaceable.
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220. At 09:05am on 30 Jul 2009, Wee-Scamp wrote:
"The really bad news today is that house price inflation may be back but still won't be considered by the MPC when considering interest rates."
Wee scamp - all the reports that have come out today have neglected one very important factor - SUPPLY.
The supply of houses has fallen significantly and eventually this must create a demand of some sort.
Once houses start going back onto the market we will see further falls.
However you are spot on that the BoE won't consider any of this as they are guided by mis-leading statistics.
Check out the housepricecrash website and you will see some very interesting graphs (especially mortgage approvals)
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I think idea that women behave differently from men say in terms of aggressive tactics is rather simplistic- for exmaple the female Mafia members and the recent Obeserver report on the ETA female terrorists. Germain Greer has made the similar point relating to women abusing children women therefore can be just as aggressive. Some of the most ruthless war leaders are women e.g Margaret Thatcher, Golder Meir; Elizabeth I; Joan of Arch; Bodicea (and my wife) It becames a bit problematic if you reduce female behaviour as naturally more consciliatory - in some tribes women are warriors and men stay at home. Hindley was a case in point; a group Red Army soldiers fought their way Hitler's bunker, the leader put the Red Flag on top-it was a Red Army, female commander.
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#234 "writingsonthewall"
"everyone knows IQ tests are no reflection on intelligence."
What is "intelligence"?
IQ is a fantastic measure of pattern matching and logical reasoning skills. It most certainly does measure those accurately.
Common sense, well no. It doesn't measure how well you can cross the road, talk your way ought of a fight or trade stocks.
Higher IQs do lend themselves well to mathematics, engineering and other technical and academic professions. When applied logically to other areas of life they can also work. They're just no indicator of social awareness or ability to fit into the world.
I dislike this "they're meaningless" meme because it usually comes from those who feel inadequate in themselves and wish to somehow prove that they're just as good as all those nerds/geeks/boffins. Not everyone can be as clever as everyone else in every way, accept it and move on.
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It was my wife spending all the money on credit cards, lonads interest free washing machines and such things. behind every man there is a woman asking for more.
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Robert,
Not so. You didn't mention Roberta Achtenberg who was appointed by Clinton in 1993 as the Assistant Secretary in the department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD). She was behind the strategy to get banks to lend to the less well off to allow them to get a mortgage on the sub-prime market. Hmmm, wasn't it the collapse of that market in the US that started the chain reaction off? So you can't blame blokes only. Roberta surely warrants a mention?
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Dear Robert Peston, Your article Why men are the cause. - Why do you write subterfuge? Your comments would be laughable if the crises caused by greedy bankers werent so serious. Tell readers the history and the true cause and stop making excuses for bankers and politicians.
PROPOSAL TO BOOST THE ECONOMY IN THE SHORTEST POSSIBLE TIME
The basis of this proposal is the same basis, proved and tested, that Gordon Brown used to generate his booming economy when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer , the main difference is, that this time, it is properly regulated.
When the Sub prime Property Market in the USA crashed the effects of which induced the credit crunch in Britain, the credit crunch exposed the driving force behind Gordon Browns booming economy, i.e. Loan To Income (LTI) mortgages, and in particular, Loan To Value (LTV) mortgages against the increasing value of the property. These mortgages up to 125% created a booming property market, a thriving building industry, generated many jobs and small businesses upon which the rest of the economy depended. (LTV) mortgages gave first time buyers the opportunity to get on the property ladder.
Property will always increase in value because supply can never meet the demand for homes. This produced an asset that guaranteed the supply of money. The banks were more than willing to loan money, as long as the asset value of the property was maintained at a profitable level.
The main control parameters of the property market are:
Supply of money;
Scarcity of building land;
Difficulty in getting planning permission;
These three parameters can be used to produce inflated prices. However, the release of building land and planning permission can be quota controls, to control the rate of housing supply at a reasonable level just below the level of demand. This will guarantee to keep the value of the asset at a level for investors to have confidence upon which to lend and should produce a healthy property market.
However, whoever controls the supply of money to the property market and building industry controls the economy. As we have seen, when unscrupulous bankers had unfettered control, it was enough to tip the balance from boom to bust of a finely tuned economy that had been created over many years of prudence.
How the government can take control of the money supply I will address later.
THE BASIS OF THE ECONOMY
Britain has always been a homeowner-based economy, not like the economies of France and Germany, where the majority of people live in rented accommodation. Homeownership made Britain one of the wealthiest and stable economies in the world.
Property, since the days of Caesar, has always increased in value, any decrease in property prices is only temporary.
MAINTAINING THE VALUE OF THE PROPERTY ASSET
Scarcity of building land, difficulty in getting planning permission and the time it takes to build substantial property using bricks and mortar and with every increasing costs, energy and labour costs, it all adds up to a very valuable asset that increases in value. Programs on how to improve your property started to appear on television, how to make a profit by increase its value for sale. Because of this, the majority of people want to get on the property ladder. Owning your own home gives a sense of security, it gives one confidence to borrow to improve their property and to keep it regularly maintained. It gives the homeowner a sense of, worth, self-esteem and pride in their achievement. These attributes and property that is well maintained, is the ingredients that gave confidence to the Banks to lend to their mortgagor-customers and to each other, the result of all this a healthy property market, a thriving building industry, DIY, building suppliers industry and many small business - providing good housing stock and a booming economy. 125% MORTGAGES MADE ALL THIS POSSIBLE IN A VERY SHORT PERIOD.
These assets are the foundation of the British economy and credit ratings upon which stability and confidence depend.
LENDING 125% MORTGAGES TO HOMEOWNERS WAS NOT RECKLESS LENDING AND WAS NOT THE CAUSE OF THE CREDIT CRUNCH.
THE MAJORITY OF HOMEOWNERS HAVE TOO MUCH TO LOSE TO BE RECKLESS. IT WAS THE GREEDY BANKERS WHO MESSED UP.
SO WHAT WENT WRONG?
BANKERS KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE DOING THEY MOST CERTAINLY WERE NO NOVICES.
Bankers most certainly knew the enormous value of mortgages backed by the secure asset of property, and that mortgage-securities would be the driving force behind a powerful booming economy. The Bankers knew how the Johnston administration used US Government-Sponsored-Enterprises (GSEs), which were securities backed by mortgages, to raise enormous amounts of collateral to fund the Vietnam War. They knew they would make a fortune, if they could trade mortgage-backed-securities on the US financial markets in the same way as (GSE's). However, bankers knew mortgages couldnt be traded unless they were taken out from under their protective regulation. So how did they get their hands on them?
Well, first, you must know what you are doing, so they dreamed up ingenious instruments called Collateral Loan Obligation (CLOs), Collateralised Debt Obligation (CDOs) and similar stealth products. To by-pass existing strict banking regulation and the law, they repackaged mortgages in the form of (CLOs), (CDOs), using (Derivative Contracts Synthetic Maxine CLO Squareds) and similar products, with which to gamble in volatile markets on US Wall Street. In short, a form of gambling using re-packaged mortgages, in a global pyramid selling scam. Bankers and Politicians would have us believe that the risks taken by bankers was all a big mistake, they even have the media convinced of this and the excuse that it was all caused by the downturn in the global economy, yet it is the bankers who control the global economy. But lets get it clear. Bankers invented (CLOs), (CDOs) and all the instruments they use. They claim to know how the global financial system operates and demand outrageous high salaries and bonuses for their expertise and risk taking. But yet they take no risk, its not their money that is at risk, it is the Taxpayer and Homeowner who has to pick up the tab.
But to make the scam work one must know how to have mortgages deregulated. This required the change in the banking system, which according to commentators on the Channel4 documentary How Long Will It Last presented by Will Hutton, broadcast 29 April 2009 Gordon Brown was the architect and he was the only one who could make that possible.
CHANGE OF THE SYSTEM
Up until 1997, the Bank of England controlled the financial system. Mortgages were protected from such abuse, under existing safeguards of regulations and the law, mortgages, in particular, were sacrosanct. Mortgages were only to be used for the purchase of property - loans for all other purchases had to be through a bank loan or hire purchase, which were short term and had a higher rate of interest. Lending banks and building societies were strictly regulated in order to protect homeowners, the security of their asset and its valuation upon which mortgage deeds depend. Lending for consumer spending on domestic and luxury goods were kept separate. There was a firewall, similar to Glass Steagall, which kept mortgage banks separated from commercial banks, which Lord Turner referred to commercial banks as, the casino banks.
However, in 1997, Gordon Brown as Chancellor, decided that he didnt like that anymore. So he introduced a system were we had, the Financial Services Authority, the Treasury, and the Bank of England, (the Tripartite Authorities) carving up the job amongst them. Just one big problem when there was a crisis, apparently nobody knew who was in control. The effect of all this Gordon as Chancellor at the helm, in effect, handed over possession, power and control of Britains economy to unscrupulous foreign bankers over which he had no jurisdiction and no authority leaving the system unregulated.
By changing the banking system, banks were able to trade (CLOs) and other similar stealth products through institutions, but an institution is not called a bank, and therefore operated outside strict bank regulations. This was the key to the unscrupulous bankers making a fortune. Banks started lending mortgages up to 125% either on income, or on the increasing value of the property asset (LTVs), the result was a booming economy.
The property assets backing (CLO's) were so valuable, that other loan sharks wanted to get in on the act - adverts started to appear on national television encouraging homeowners to free up equity from their home and to - Spend! Spend! Spend!
Some people were suckered into rent and buy-back scams wilfully calculated to eventually confiscate their homes. The banks were handing out credit cards to people who had no assets, many of whom were in temporary employment - shopping on the high street was a wash with cash.
The economy was booming, it was over heating - But what if Gordon Brown, decided to get in on the act and extend the 40% Tax on newly built homes to include second-hand property, this on top of stamp duty? When every Tom, Dick and Harry was in on the act, it wasnt inconceivable that he might have the same idea. The banks knowing the inflated state of the economy, being afraid that he might introduce such a tax, decided to pull the rug out from under his feet.
The Banks could see that with increasing inflation and if other sharks were to siphon off equity from their customers mortgage-backed-securities, they would become toxic, under mining the value of the assets, against which they had loaned. Banks and the bond market wanted their money back. The only way to do that was to cut off the money supply, take control of homeowner spending by increasing mortgage interest rates or by repossession. Banks and the bond market started to induce a credit squeeze, which had that effect. Homeowners, to pay their mortgage cut back on spending and on essentials such as insurance and maintenance to their property.
When property is not properly maintained, it becomes shabby and devalues other properties in the area. The properties are more likely to be vandalized and so this disease spreads until the whole area is affected, the property asset becomes toxic. This happened in Cleveland in the US. American homes, many are timber, which if not properly maintained, and exposed to the elements, they quickly deteriorate.
One should keep in mind - whose idea was it to change the banking system? Was it Gordon Browns idea? Was it the Bankers? Or was it both? Who persuaded whom?
However, it was reported in the media that although Gordon Brown blames the bankers he said, he didnt know what the bankers had been doing. Well, if Gordon Brown didnt see the crises coming Jeff Randal is most certainly convinced that all of us saw it coming, in his words is Rubbish. Jeff Randal blames us the consumer for not living within our means. But Randal, One can only live outside their means if their bank will allow it. Greedy bankers suckered many into loans and then a year or so down the line put up interest rates.
WHILE THE ECONOMY WAS BOOMING, UNSCRUPULOUS BANKERS GOT GREEDY
To raise more collateral to fund their greed, they borrowed funds from China and other foreign banks that were short term and loaned this money on long-term mortgages, which they packaged up and sold on - The more of this stuff they sold the bigger their bonuses.
The credit crunch and recession in Britain was caused by unscrupulous greedy bankers and Gordon Browns unregulated Laissez faire policy which left the vault door wide open for unscrupulous greedy bankers to have a field day. Whilst homeowners were sleeping in their beds, bankers were undermining the financial foundations of their property asset, by taking mortgages out from under existing strict banking regulation and the law - and to add insult to injury, Brown and Darling handed over hundreds of billions of taxpayers money into the hands of bankers with no legal binding agreements whatsoever. It beggars belief.
THE CONSEQUENCES FOR HOMEOWNERS AND THE TAXPAYER
Bankers with no risk to themselves were gambling with homeowners mortgages backed by the asset security of their homes in unregulated volatile markets - and they lost them, the effects for homeowners, taxpayers and the economy have been devastating.
Homeowners and taxpayers, through no fault of their own, have been made liable for hundreds of billions of pounds.
Many homeowners struggled for many years to get on and stay on the property ladder. Why after paying their taxes, should they pay for bank losses by way of: increased interest rates, repossessions - made homeless with predatory bailiffs plundering their property?
The Bank of England, on the one hand, used taxpayers money, to replenish bank losses caused by bankers' gambling, loaning it at an imposed penalty interest rate. Whilst on the other hand, the Banks in open defiance refuse to pass on the Bank of Englands cut in interest rate benefit to mortgagor-customers. Instead, they use the benefit to offset and reduce the penalty interest rate all at the expense of the taxpayer and benefit relief meant for homeowners.
Why should homeowners and taxpayers pay with: financial hardship; unable to put food on the table; mental stress; and devastating effects of it all for the rest of their life and their childrens lives - whilst the bankers are having a party?
Even for homeowners who have no mortgage the effects of bankers greed and gambling has caused their property to drop in value. Everyone is affected in some way or another.
Why should the super-rich bankers get away with their staggering profit, big bonuses, and asset stripping, scot-free - at the expense of homeowners losing their home, the enormous costs to the taxpayer, the financial vandalism and damage they have caused to our economy?
Why involve the taxpayer? This involvement of the taxpayer has set a dangerous precedence, and whilst it continues, it is another form of stealth tax, wilfully calculated most foul.
At no time has the taxpayer been responsible for the conduct and dealings of private investors and private commercial banks.
At no time did homeowners and taxpayers give authority to any bank, institution or any government to create, or gamble with instruments used to raise collateral putting their homes at risk.
The fact that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, by your own admission, that their emergency legislation is covert, showed the purpose of their intent, to keep secret the extent and severity of liability to be placed upon homeowners and the taxpayer.
This litany of grievances is not the policy of a democratic government. It is the policy of a dictatorship. In principle and in law the Bankers and the Government acted unlawful, inter alia.
BANKS HAVE DELIBERATELY CUT OFF THE MONEY SUPPLY
Banks after having been bailed out, in open defiance have stopped lending, effectively inducing a recession.
Whilst there is no firewall between mortgage banks ant commercial (Casino banks), bankers and politicians will treat the taxpayer as a bottomless pit of money, which they can dip into every time they want bailed out.
Lord Turner of the FSA said. Instead of waiting until a bank has run up so much debt to such an extent that it is reported as a catastrophic melt down. My job is to take away the punch bowl before the party gets out of hand.
I can already see the newspaper headlines: Banks have been dipping their mugs into the punch bowl so often triggering the small limits set by the FSA that the accumulation of their debt siphoned off over the years from the taxpayer has run into hundreds of billions of pounds. It has become an accepted practice for the taxpayer to pick up the tab of bankers gambling.
WHAT IS NEEDED TO RESTORE CONFIDENCE AND STABILITY.
Throwing money at the banks in an attempt to give them confidence to lend, is putting the cart before the horse.
A healthy property market is the only secure asset that can bring back confidence in the economy.
Instead of bailing out banks to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds, which in open defiance refuse to lend deliberately inducing a blockage in the money supply, the government must first restore confidence in the mortgagor-homeowner. Mortgages must be made sacrosanct so that unscrupulous bankers cannot use them to raise collateral putting homes at risk. Mortgages must be separated from other forms of commercial dealings by a firewall, in a similar way to Glass-Steagall in the US, which gave security to America. If commercial banks want to gamble in commercial markets, they do so at their own risk. But let it be made clear that the practice of gambling with other peoples homes and possessions is not acceptable and regardless of Gordon Browns changes to the banking system in 1997, in principle and in law such practice has always been, and still is, unlawful and a criminal offence.
80% of new cars manufactured in Britain are for the export market. Unless you have a healthy export market for them, and as there is no home market for cars, and as they depreciate in value and have a short shelf life, throwing money at the car industry will only create stockpiles of thousands of out-of-date cars that will have to be auctioned off.
To stimulate the economy and employment, companies should be encouraged to create assets that appreciate, building a firm foundation upon which stability can be sustained and should be rewarded with tax cuts. The idea being, More Growth for Tax Relief. This incentive would give confidence for companies to succeed, giving secure employment, inter alia. This I believe is also the view of Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is a professor at Columbia University and the former chief economist at the World Bank. He is the co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. Link to: Amy Goodman interviews Joseph Stiglitz. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/25/stieglitz.
PROPOSAL FOR A NEW FINANCIAL SYSTEM PROPERLY REGULATED.
THE NEW DEAL 20/80 FINANCIAL SYSTEM
All investments in the Financial System are at the investors own risk, no bailouts,
The Financial System is made up of:
The Financial Wholesale Markets
The Mortgage Bank System
The Commercial Bank System
The two Banking Systems must be separate into the Mortgage Bank System and the Commercial Bank System, in a similar way to Glass Steagall Act. The two systems having their own interest rate, each rate set by the Bank of England.
To invest in the Financial System, it is compulsory that:
20% of all investments go into the: Mortgage Bank System, and the other;
80% into the: Commercial Bank System.
The Mortgage System interest rate at all times must be kept at a lower rate than the commercial market rate, any cut in interest rate by the Bank of England, at all times, is for the benefit of the mortgagor and must be passed on immediately to the mortgagor. The investment to be long term and the mortgage sacrosanct. At no time can mortgages be used to raise collateral for commercial purposes. Mortgages can only be used for improvements of the property and maintenance to the property.
To make sure that mortgage loans are spent on the property, all invoices and labour receipts must be produced to HM Inland Revenue Vat Department in the same or similar way as the existing DIY Vat Scheme for new home builds.
The Commercial Markets
Proposals for incentives for investors to invest:
For investing 20% of their investment in the Mortgage Bank System this would give:
a reduction in corporation tax on the other 80%;
insurance plan may be another possibility.
The other 80% of their investment is at the investors own risk.
This model is a proposal for discussion. The idea is that the majority of people have no money to invest. But as money is a commodity, upon which the economy depends, those who are fortunate to have considerable sums of surplus money. If they want to invest it in any kind of financial market, they can only invest through a licensed bank or financial institution that operates the 20/80 financial system controlled by properly regulated and legislation with a deterrent for any abuse of the system, so that there would be no place to invest other than in a 20/80 financial system.
No doubt investors may look to other countries for a better deal. However, as many countries are affected by the downturn in the global economy, it may be possible to persuade other countries to adapt a similar plan.
Like it or not, LTV mortgages up to 125% have proven to produce a booming economy in a very short time and is the only asset that can be used to bring back confidence and stability. People should be allowed to borrow up to 125% mortgage as long as they have a project such as, creating a new house or for buying and renovating an old house, and mortgages should be made available for maintaining their property.
On Wednesday 13 May 2009, in The Telegraph Business Section, it reported that Gordon Brown has proposed a maximum loan-to-value (LTV) level of 90%. Lord Turner, FSA chairman, said: A key choice in product regulation would be between (LTV) and (LTI) limits. There is a prima facie case that (LTI) limits are more likely to be appropriate given that it is the relationship between income and loan repayments which determines whether a household can service its debt.
It is obvious from his statement that he is dithering. The property market and building industry would not recover under Lord Turners proposal. His proposal would strangle the money supply to the property market and building industry causing further unemployment, a down-ward spiral affecting the economy. If you want to recharge the economy you have to decide whether you want a trickle charge or a booster charge. Gordon Brown said, these are not normal times and require therefore extraordinary solutions.
When Norman Lamont took Britain into the ERM which fixed the level of the pound within a band. Because Britains economy is based on homeownership, different from the rest of Europe, where the majority of people live in rented accommodation, the economy went into recession which caused negative equity. The only thing that could take up the strain in Britains economy was the property asset. Britain had to come out of the ERM, but it cost Britain 48 billion pounds. Britains economy depends on the financial industry, manufacturing for export and the property asset. But the ERM fiasco exposed proof, that unless you have a healthy property market and building industry, it can tip the balance between boom and bust.
How to raise collateral to kick start my proposal and how it will self-generate would require strict control and regulation on the banks and in particular the bankers.
The building industry is the biggest employer, but there are only a small number of firms that control and supply of materials to the industry and they have bought up all the small local DIY shops. They now own the producers and manufactures of materials. The government needs to look at this to prevent money being taken out of Britain.
I believe the money masters are determined to have Gordon Brown thrown out of office. If I were Gordon Brown, I wouldnt rely on green shoots of the City, they are only giving him enough rope to hang himself. There are only two ways Gordon Brown can over-come his dilemma. He either creates a Government Bank, use quantitative easing to loan mortgages up to 125%. For the other banks to compete they would have no alternative but to start lending, or he put my proposal to the money masters, but they would be looking for their pound of flesh.
Although I am disappointed with the way things went wrong with the economy, I would strongly advise that serious consideration should be given to my proposals, which I believe, is the only solution to get the economy back on track. It is the key to winning the next election.
As many homeowners are facing repossession and all the devastating consequences that it can have on their families, this situation cannot be allowed to continue.
The key to recovery must be first and foremost to place confidence in the mortgagor-homeowner. Once homeowners have confidence in the financial security of the investment in their home, only then will confidence spread to the banks to lend and to the rest of the economy.
Homeowner and Taxpayer.
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240 Gothnet
"Not everyone can be as clever as everyone else in every way, accept it and move on."
Spoken like a true elitist.
So tell me - what evidence do you have that we're all born with different levels of intelligence rather than we're all born the same and it's our intellectual development and circumstance that defines our intelligence?
I suppose you also subscribe to the capitalist theory that 'some people deserve more because they're cleverer than the rest'.
I do not feel inadequate at all - in fact I score very highly on IQ tests because my mind works in that logical way. However it doesn't mean I'm intelligent.
...and as for not including common sense in intelligence - well this is typical of someone who has spent their lives gathering qualifications which are only testamaent to their 'memory function' and not their intelligence i.e. ability to think of imaginative solutions to problems.
P.s. You'll note that I only referred to IQ as being related to intelligence after the earlier post - I did not suggest the concept to begin with - in fact I was simply stating that it's not a measure to be trusted.
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Oh dear, Robert. What an appallingly venemous, uninformed, misleading and misandrist piece of propaganda. I do hope you get a pat on the back from your feminist chums at Common Purpose, the BBC and the "third sector", because your approval rating from most posters here shows a downtrend in excess of one standard deviation. Let me explain, Robert (in a soundbite). People think your argument is facile. Very low on facts, very big on woman-first ideology, innuendo, stereotypes, rhetoric and populism.
Before signing off, I have one request (and all will be forgiven). Can you write a piece saying: "Why women are to blame for rising crime?" It's an easy article really Rob. Young children spend more time with their mother (custody cases, family breakdowns, no rights for single/divorced fathers, relatively little paternity leave for fathers). Ok, I know it's hard to knock the lefty dream, but bear with me. These children, at their most formative/impressionistic stages, then get sent to a female-dominated teaching environment, at which stage the academic underperformance of boys starts. Surprise, surprise, media stories of girls' "triumphs" proliferate. Rob, I don't have time to finish this, but I'm sure you can see where this is leading. Remember, you don't have to get too bogged down - what you say ARE the facts. Let me know how you get on.
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Oh, and by the way, all the key players were all educated in the private sector, so that makes it 50% of 7%, thats erm.... 3.5% of the population caused the remaining 96.5% so much (ongoing) grief. This surely isn't right.
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This isn't to do with being men, it's to do with some men.
I just don't buy the argument that 'women wouldn't be the same'. They might well be, unless they all got together and changed the rules to reward their shareholders with less.........tough call that one.......
There are many women who are ruthless, brutal and self-promoting in the place of work. There are many men who are self-less, concerned and prudent in the place of work. It just that we don't hear about that in the media.
It simply will not do to use simplistic gender labels about this.
One wonders whether the media-wimmin-mafia, which undoubtedly exists, is responsible for this?
And one wonders if they will be blamed for increasing amounts of obesity, lethargy, drinking and impotence amongst the men who despair of all the feminist sexist rubbish they are force fed on so many occasions in the Press?
Course not. If the men initiate something and it goes wrong, it's their fault. But if women initiate something hateful and men wilt as a result, it's the men's fault too.
Seems a far cry from Equality of Responsibilities, doesn't it?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
writingsonthewall (#244)
"So tell me - what evidence do you have that we're all born with different levels of intelligence rather than we're all born the same and it's our intellectual development and circumstance that defines our intelligence?"
Plenty, see Twin Studies. MZ twins raised apart have IQs which are very highly correrlated. You clearly just don't anything about this work. Another fact is that education doesn't raise IQ (see Jensen and 40 years of research such as HeadStart, which has failed to narrow the B-W difference etc).
We know it's largely genetic now. We know that shared environment doesn't account for much other than via damage (e.g. clouts round the head killing brain cells, hypoxia, drugs/alcohol) lowering innate ability.
OK? Go and read some of the work. All anyone in the know is really interested in now is how it works chemically i.e molecularly genetically in terms of QTLs and their CNS expression in brain proteins (e.g. receptors, number of neurones etc).
If you don't believe you can measure intelligence, how do you know what you are talking about? Hmmm?
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Isn't this purely theory that can't be proven at the moment? As we are told women are deprived an equal input to economic matters and this has always been the case, then where is the proof that having women provide an equal input would actually change anything? To say that as most of the people in the industry are male and so that must be part of the problem is like looking at 2 separate facts that don't really have any real grip on one another. For example, I have a pen on my desk here, I've never been mugged in work so do pens prevent crime???
Of all the people in a position to blow the whistle before the whole thing came apart I'm sure some were women, and as it would only take 1 person to go public, womens record is the same 100% fail rate as the men's in this matter, the only difference is the control groups were of different sizes.
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You are missing one important point.
Men acquire money in order to attract women (mostly)
It's all down to sex you see
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Robert, I have worked for 19 years in the City at Nomura, CSFB, Paribas, Salomon Bros, UBS, Bank of America and HSBC. Although it may be fashionable for you to express these views, both you and I know why there are not more women in investment banking. They are utterly useless in all roles - trading, sales, origination, risk management, research, and especially senior management. I speak with vast experience and authority when I say that the very meritocratic organisations such as those named above have failed to attract one single example of a useful female investment banker of the approximately 3,500 individuals I have interacted with throughout my career. I am not a psychologist and therefore have no scientific explanation for this observatipn, but it nevertheless remains real. I think if you were to have an honest heart-to-heart with any of your emiment senior banker contacts, they wpuld sau (off the record) precisely the same thing. I read ypur blog avidly, ypu are truly the Socrates of modern times, but on this one I'm afrais you're utterly wrong. Dirk
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nothins_ever_easy (#250) "Isn't this purely theory that can't be proven at the moment?"
No. It shows up at the population level in maths tests (and subjects that depend on numeracy) across the world. There is no 'equality'. People who make out there is or should be are misguided. Females are also shorter than males (on average). People just are not very good at thinking/talking in terms of distributions and their parameters. Natrual Language is not up to all sorts of tasks. That's why we create specialist languages for the sciences etc.
"As we are told women are deprived an equal input to economic matters and this has always been the case, then where is the proof that having women provide an equal input would actually change anything?"
Are we also 'told' that women have been 'deprived' of jumping as high as men too? Or that men have been deprived of having babies? Note how the word 'deprived' is easily abused. Are minority groups 'deprived' or just not as able in some areas? It's like saying that people with no legs have been 'deprived' of breaking the 100m sprint record. It's also like people saying that people who dodn't get A grades in maths dodn't, only because they aren't 'motivated' to get As, or because they just aren't 'interested' in maths.........
These intensional terms are the problem. They are therefore eschewed in good science, and for known logical reasons.
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#243 Forensic-Debate:
Very interesting comments. Have you written these arguments in your spare time? Whilst some of your conclusions may be debatable, you clearly spent a lot of time reflecting on the causes of the current financial crisis.
Do you work in a related field?
Please visit the following web site for further arguments. You are welcome to leave a comment if you wish:
http://globalinsights.wordpress.com/
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Steve Arnold 2009,
You need to read up your history a bit better and observe a bit more closely. You weren't around when Thatcher had to sort out the pit of slothfulness that this country had descended into, and you probably weren't around when the economy and house prices over-heated during the conservative government. They put the brakes on and there was a recession and house prices fell, so the encouragement to greed you talk about doesn't stand up to scrutiny over the long run. There was encouragement to save, to better yourself through buying your own home, to be entrepreneurial, to look after yourself and your family, to decide how to spend your own money yourself instead of having it taken in increasing amounts of inefficiently-used taxes and to share in the ownership more directly of nationalised industries, including some risk-taking.
But any over-heating then pales into insignificance compared to the excesses we've seen allowed under Gordon Brown's relaxed rules and his fear of applying the brakes, even now that the economy has crashed. And again no female influence in the areas at fault in sight.
I'll be interested to see if the moderators can cope with allowing this to be published.
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Aah, tea (#255) "And again no female influence in the areas at fault in sight."
You have got to be joking. We now live in a feminized culture where to be is to consume. We no longer make things, we just provide 'services', and our educational system has been structured to advantage high verbal fluency (female) over logical analysis and its application to the world (male).
This trend has been building sinve at least the late 70s. Blair/Brown just inherited it.
Whilst we are drowning in spin, emotion and dysgenic, differential, below replacement level fertility - i.e. headed towards biological extinction, and our alleged enemies are the very people who prize exactly the opposite....(cf. Islam)
Do you think there might just be something a little bit wrong with what we've been doing in the name of alleged equality for the past 30 years or so?
Ask which is the major matriarchal family system in the world... (It also spawned Trotskyism and of course feminism).
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Addendum (#256) Many people don't understand that when it comes to genes, but for the sex chromosomes, the two sexes are the same. Note however that whlst females have two X chomosomes, outside the gonads the second X is largely inactived, leaving just a small number of genes active near the tips. Inactivation begins at the middle (centromere) and works outwards. The genes left in on inactive second X match many of those genes on the extra (otherwise very stunted) chromosome which the male has..but not, males have SOME extra genes which females do not have. These genes cause a cascade which lead to lots of physical differences as everyone should know.
It's because testosterone is so important in this cascade that any testosterone in the mother's bllod surin conception/gestation has such an impact of female progeny. This means that some females can be slightly androgenised. So it is of coure possible that some females can have some male cognitive characteristics (brain gender), but it's relatively infrequent.
It is als worth noting that there is an autosomal recessive polymorphism/disorder in man on chromosome 6 at position 21 on the p arm (6p21, the area of the MHC too..). This results in changes to the expressive functionality of the gene CYP21 which is critically important in the synthesis of the sex steroids (testosterone and estrogen etc) from cholesterol. This polymorphism (i.e the gene exists in a variety of forms) results in Non Classic Adrenal Hyperplasia (and in more extreme cases Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia). I won't go into the details of this, but the interesting thing is with the milder, Non Classic type as this is the most common autosomal recessive disorder known to mankind. It's effect is to very slightly feminise males and very slightly masculinse females.
There are ethnic differences in the prevalence of this. I'll leave interested readers to fnd out more. For one group, 1/3 are carriers.
This might explain a lot. On the other hand, it might not. It's an empirical matter.
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Don't you ever proof-read your blogs Robert ?
"Why men are to blame for the crunch" should read:
"Why White Countries are to blame for the crunch"
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Sir Azazello (#258) One could refine it down much further. Look back through the Flanders and Newsnight blogs for some posts on NYC and its demographics. London is not quite the same, but it has gone in a similar direction in recnet times.
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errata (#256;#257;#259) apologies for the typos/lits. The root idea in #257 is tatstable, and has been looked at to sme extent (se Charmandari et al. 204) but it's dificult to know what can be done about it. Mass screening is already done in some USA states, but is expensive. Where there is risk of CAH it is usually only female embryos which are treated with dexamathasone in utero as males are not so obviously affected. But then, subtle changes in cognitive behaviour/personality are not regarded as problems, just diversity. For thsoe who don't know, the adrenals are part of the hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal fights/flight defence system (a;so the pontine Locus Coeruleus etc), as is the chromosomally adjacent Major Histocompatibility Complex on C6p21. The latter is not just critical to the immune system, but in the identification of self from non-self, and thus assortive mating....
Whilst this is still at the conjecture stage, I think I'm right to say that there is lots of good empirical evidence for the overall picture I am painting. Look out for reduced stature and unusual stress responses.
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259 jaded jean
you should read this book INFO-PSYCHOLOGY it will blow your mind
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Jaded,
Did you know that the Pig Gene is the most closely related family to the Human Gene
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Sir Azazello (#261) I blew my 'mind' several decades ago (be sure to listen to Quine at the end, as something very odd' been going on since the late 70s).
I'd recommend Plomin et al, 'Behavioral Genetics' 5th ed. before Leary. In fact, I'd strongly advise everyone to give the latter very wide berth.
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#255
How do you better yourself by buying your own house? You'd still be the same person. The difference is a financial one, not one of moral character.
What an absurd assertion!
As is the idea that we're all financially better off for owning our own houses. When I compare the house my wife and I can afford with the house I grew up in (I think my career is more successful than my father's and my mother didn't work, so the house was paid for by one income), I have to come to the conclusion that materially, I'm worse off because house ownership is much greater and house prices are higher, probably in part due to people using two incomes to pay off mortgages instead of one.
So, in terms of space, I'm worse off than if I'd lived 30 years ago, and this is due to greater house ownership.
Rising house prices has also brought in a greater number of people using house price rises to invest and grow their wealth by owning several properties and renting them out. This has probably lead to house price gains too.
You're only materially better off if your mortgage repayments are less than what it would cost to rent the same property; until you finally pay off your mortgage, usually somewhere near retirement.
What I consider the most insidious part of greater house ownership is in the increasing need for young people to get financial help from their parents in order to buy their first house. If you are not lucky enough to have relatives well-off enough to help, you're increasingly unlikely to be able to by a house at all. This essentially makes the gap between haves and have-nots even worse. What's more, it encourages people to go into jobs that may pay well, but have little social impact. To be a teacher or a nurse or a social worker is to commit to a lesser financial future - one that previously we might have associated with manual labour.
David Cameron has spoken about the need to reward hard work and financial success by ensuring people can pass more of their wealth on to their children by raising the level at which people pay inheritance tax. The problem with this idea is that although you may be seen to reward the hard-working parents, you're actually rewarding the children who did absolutely nothing to get that money. If you want to reward people who work hard, then abolishing inheritance would be the logical thing to do.
Sorry that this is completely off topic, but I needed to rant!
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249. JadedJean
Absolute hogwash.
don't quote any 'scientific or psychological research' at me and claim that it proves anything.
So far this year 'science' has confirmed that coffee is bad for you, coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you, coffee is good for you etc. etc. etc.
If it is down to genetics then how do you explain genius children born to average parents? Or idiot children born to genius parents?
Your whole idea of genetics breaks down completely when you consider the diversity of intelligence within a single multi-child family. The study where the seperated twins were found to have similar IQ's - well let me ask you
a) were the twins put into vastly different upbringings? - i.e. one in a 'stupid' family and the other in an intelligent one.
b) If the measure of the diversion is IQ - then this is like controlling the economy based on GDP - IT ONLY LOOKS AT ONE ASPECT.
You also have missed the fact that some 'intelligence' may be absorbed when inside the womb (as we already know unborn babies hear music etc.) - so how do scientist know that this wasn't the defining factor in the similarity in intelligence.
All the science based on receptors and neurons are 'after the fact' and therefore are a symptom and not a cause as they can only be applied to a developed (existing) brain and not one that is not yet formed.
As for IQ, it only measures certain aspects of thinking, not actual intelligence. It's not possible to measure intelligence for the follwing reason.
A man who goes through his educational life doing poorly, low IQ score, low exam results etc.
One day in his mature life - without the 'learned knowledge' which clutters others minds - he sees a solution to all of societies problems. The rest of us cannot ssee it because we have clouded our judgement with presumed facts. Only wihtout these facts is the man able to see the simplicity of the solution.
Now according to you - this man would not be intelligent, however if he solves all human social and Economic problems then he is certainly of a vastly superior intelligence to the rest of us.
What you have proven however is that science is filled with well qualified idiots - as they are so quick to see a pattern that isn't there but do not see how it could possibly fit into the wider picture.
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Two comments on successive posts (221-2) have got me thinking:
"Successful risk takers are likely to be prevalent at the top of finance no matter what, what is required is for the more risk averse (be they male or female) to attempt to temper that risk (normally through constructive regulation) to make sure it does not get out of hand."
"The other aspect of the emphasis on behavioural skills is the pervading culture of always being positive. In banks like HBOS it would be impossible to carry out a function of regulating Risk competently, whilst being handicapped with a slogan of "always be positive"."
This is a question of risk. Perhaps the biggest risk-takers are men, and/or men are on average less risk-averse than women. Either way, this recession is the result of huge risks gone very badly wrong, and many of these failed gambles were based upon the self-delusion and positivity of the general populace, who as a result took opportunities that should never have been afforded to them, and didn't stop to think why they shouldn't have been.
A corollary with "Deal or No Deal" is relevant here. Both contestants to have won the top prize were females, but one was through a production team deux ex machina after an earlier safe decision and the other was through a very low offer. If females sometimes appear less risk-averse on the show, it is because all the contestants are cast with at least one eye on their propensity to gamble, but male contestants are more likely to bring female partners who urge caution than the other way round - thus allowing female contestants to be less risk-averse precisely as a function of females being more risk-averse!
The reason I thought of this show in this context, thugh, is the second remark, where 'thinking positive' is used as an inducement to gamble. Worked incredibly well in the bubble years, and still in effect now.
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It's not gender that is the issue here. The closer you move to the top of the greasy pole then the greater the pressure to do what you are expected to do. That means never owning up to how hard things are, absorbing the junk that flows down hill, and delivering apparent growth. Apparent growth by the way is what appears on a near term forecast, as opposed to real growth which is what you see after a sustained trend over a number of years. The women in the top of my organisation, yes there are some, set goals that contradict their rhetoric - demanding we bring risky deals then setting short term goals that ensure no risk is taken. The failure at the end of the period falls on the team who didn't reach the goals, while the attempt to bring in risky business was all but forgotten in the stampede for short term results.
It's not a gender thing. It's down to presentation. Who makes the best job of presenting short termism as something worhwhile? Who can cover the fact that our two legged horse will need to be carried over the course by the jockey after we cut off those two legs? I think a woman is less likely to come out with total hogwash - but in this ever changing world, even that is no longer guaranteed.
So if women are to reach the top, betray your gender and spout hogwash while appearing to be larger than life. It works every time.
Don't sell your souls sisters!
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254 invisiblehandadvisor
Thank you for your comments and for pointing me to http://globalinsights.wordpress.com/
I would also highly recommend this site.
Regarding Alistair Darling clamping down on the banks he is only sabre rattling.
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Nice idea, but I have known few male or female managers who I have been able to respect. Perhaps it is the nature of the leadership position, and the means of selection, that determines the performance of the post. My contribution to Management literature will be "Bastards get to the top". My preference is for wisdom.
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'All great men have a great woman behind them'. You're right that men are largely to blame for the direct causes of the credit crunch. It is a power game though done to impress women, perhaps indirectly. We all know the concept of the 'trophy' wife, which many 'powerful' men have.
Perhaps women need to change men's perception of how to impress them.
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All those men moaning about demanding wives need to move out of the shallow city and find themselves normal women who are not motivated by money or need the latest designer handbag.
They do exist I am pleased to say.
However, I am a great believer in the thinking that in life, you get what you deserve. Trophy wives are high maintenance.
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214, That would be Jo Dawson. Partly to blame for the troubles at HBOS but only following orders from the real architect James Crosby, who if I had my way would have been thrown infront of the select committee alongside seeming scapegoat Andy Hornby.
As for the article itself Mr Peston I believe the phrase 'sensationalism' is lodging itself in your head
There is another well known phrase that includes the words 'No' and 'Sherlock' which could be a valid response to the title of this blog
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There is no evidence that putting woman in these jobs would have any diffrent impact than men!
There are good men and woman and bad and unfortunally in my experence we have just as much chancew ofgetting bad woman as bad men.
Based on the argument that woman would have acted diffrently begs the question as to weather we would have had the ten good years before that?
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Robert, let me retort.
With the economic concept of sovereignty responsibility ultimately lies with the economic and political decisions of households. As much as we like to think that bankers and politicians are to blame we all wanted the spoils.
1)Women are having very long retirements often living off the fantasy that UK property will yield huge amounts of cash in perpetuity.
2)Women are far more likely to vote for higher public spending while men are generally being taxed to pay for it unless it is borrowed.
3)A lot of women enjoy the social status of having high earning partners and of buying property. More so than men in my view.
4)In China and some other Asian countries the phenominal level of household savings is driven by paying for future healhcare and retirement. Not men's strong point.
5) The newspapers that were the biggest fans of house price increases had a far stronger female readership than those that didn't.
While the bank's risk management was (and still is) appalling voters where very happy to have house prices to rise to levels that became unstable and they got what they wanted. The system works.
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