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30 Dec

I am just about to finish reading anthropologist Karen Ho Order Ambien Credit Card‘s Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street Buy Tramadol Without Prescriptions. She carried out seventeen months of fieldwork on Wall Street, interviewing and Generic Valium Diazepam observing investment bankers. Actually, she started out as a rookie analyst working in management consulting in a Generic Valium Diazepam hybrid investment and commercial bank. She had the intention of doing some pre-fieldwork study before going back to Generic Valium Diazepam graduate school to write a dissertation on Wall Street culture. She got laid off after six months into her job. The experience of being laid off became one of the Generic Valium Diazepam central things she studied during her fieldwork.

The book is Generic Valium Diazepam not so much an indictment of Wall Street as it is Generic Valium Diazepam a presentation of the way the Street understands its place in the Generic Valium Diazepam scheme of things. She highlights the self-understanding of investment bankers as ‘being’ the Generic Valium Diazepam market, an understanding that goes as far as to justify, on the Generic Valium Diazepam one hand, receiving insanely huge bonuses, and on the other, being very liquid individuals themselves. The rate of staff turnover on Wall Street is Generic Valium Diazepam extremely high.

Perhaps the Generic Valium Diazepam point that I found most instructive is the way Wall Street has Generic Valium Diazepam changed corporate American culture in the past 25 years. Corporations, which were seen as part of the Generic Valium Diazepam welfare capitalism of the post 2nd World War era gradually lost their status as social institutions. Shareholder value has Generic Valium Diazepam become naturalised as the sole reason for the existence of corporations, and Generic Valium Diazepam anything that can improve shareholder value, no matter how short that Generic Valium Diazepam increase in value lasts, is encouraged. This sometimes includes hostile takeover, and Generic Valium Diazepam almost always demands massive job cuts and downsizing. Once corporations are Generic Valium Diazepam no longer seen as social institutions that provide jobs and care for Generic Valium Diazepam customers, those are rather easy things to do. Perhaps inconvenient, but easy.

The emphasis on shareholder value has Generic Valium Diazepam led to short-term thinking and has often robbed corporations of the Generic Valium Diazepam ability to make long-term plans. If a group of investors buy up a Generic Valium Diazepam company by leveraging that same company on the junk bonds market, with the plan to cut spendings on R&D and cut jobs in order to ‘improve’ the Generic Valium Diazepam shareholder value of the company before selling it off, how would they make long-term plans for Generic Valium Diazepam such company? This could happen to corporations that are healthy, all things – including stock price – considered.

This leads me to Generic Valium Diazepam thinking about what is currently happening in the Nigerian banking industry. I blogged about it Xanax Online To Australia when Generic Valium Diazepam five banks were taken over by the Nigerian Central Bank. Shortly after, that Generic Valium Diazepam the Central Bank published a list debtors of the banks. In all that, what Generic Valium Diazepam was not mentioned was the corporate practices of those banks during the Generic Valium Diazepam Nigerian stock market bubble. Actually, the Generic Valium Diazepam practices of the banks was what created the bubble. Increasing their own shareholder value became the Generic Valium Diazepam main job of the banks. Of course, in a weird way, this Generic Valium Diazepam is understandable. Wall Street could claim to work on increasing shareholder value of corporate America; in Nigeria, the Generic Valium Diazepam banking industry is corporate Nigeria.

It is Generic Valium Diazepam not by chance that it was after the bubble burst that Generic Valium Diazepam the Central Bank took over the banks. Before then, the profits banks were declaring were highly manipulated figures that Generic Valium Diazepam bore no relationship to the actual condition of the banks. Now, they have Generic Valium Diazepam to find a way of reconciling their balance sheet, somehow. I was in Nigeria a Generic Valium Diazepam couple of weeks ago, and the cry was, and still is, that Generic Valium Diazepam banks are laying off staff in droves and closing up branches.

It is Generic Valium Diazepam perhaps obvious from this post that a lot of things are Generic Valium Diazepam still not clear, at least to me. Newspaper commentaries I have Generic Valium Diazepam been reading since the banking crisis started have not helped me much. This is Generic Valium Diazepam probably due to the fact that we are always too quick to Generic Valium Diazepam resort to simplistic explanations – one of which was the publication of the list of debtors – that we (the public, and even journalists) stop asking questions that Generic Valium Diazepam might lead to a better understanding of what happened. As if the Generic Valium Diazepam only reason the banks are in trouble is because they gave out too much in loans.

I am Generic Valium Diazepam now thinking that it might be a nice idea to do an Generic Valium Diazepam ethnographic study of the Nigerian financial sector when I am done with my second-hand clothing dissertation.One of the Generic Valium Diazepam biggest strengths of anthropology is the fact that anthropologists ask basic and Generic Valium Diazepam simple questions, questions whose answers are sometimes assumed, until they are Generic Valium Diazepam asked. Wouldn’t it Generic Valium Diazepam be interesting to turn that kind of attitude towards the Nigerian banking industry?

You can listen to Karen Ho on Laurie Taylor’s Thinking Allowed programme on the BBC.