Order Diazepam Usa

Joris Luyendijk, Dutch anthropologist and Order Diazepam Usa journalist, is currently blogging an anthropological study of bankers he’s doing in the Order Diazepam Usa City of London for Guardian. From the introduction to the blog:

It is Order Diazepam Usa quite a change for me, exploring bankers. I used to Order Diazepam Usa do anthropological fieldwork among students in the slums of Cairo, then Order Diazepam Usa worked as a Middle East correspondent going back and forth between Hamas leaders and Order Diazepam Usa Jewish settlers. The latter were people who knew they might die at any moment for Order Diazepam Usa their convictions, and had made their peace with that. Meanwhile those students lived off less than a dollar a day.

Compare this Order Diazepam Usa to the bankers and I have moved from freestyle boxing to Order Diazepam Usa billiards. Then again, readers’ responses may not be that different.

When I wrote about Israel and Order Diazepam Usa the Palestinians some readers would judge an article exclusively by whether it Order Diazepam Usa was likely to make one camp look good or the Order Diazepam Usa other. In particular, pieces that humanised their objects of hate elicited very aggressive letters to Order Diazepam Usa the editor – or worse. I expect the same thing with bankers.

The Middle East is Order Diazepam Usa a pretty intense place but unless you have family living or Order Diazepam Usa serving there, for most readers it is also a pretty far away place. Finance is Order Diazepam Usa not. If somebody told you your savings aren’t safe, she’d have your full and immediate attention, wouldn’t she? But if she then said the words “bank reform” many would have to suppress a yawn.

This is paradoxical. Finance directly affects everyone’s interests, but many have Order Diazepam Usa a hard time maintaining their interest in it. But as the Order Diazepam Usa collapse of Lehman Brothers and the following three years have Order Diazepam Usa shown, the financial world is too important to leave to Order Diazepam Usa the bankers – in fact in some countries democracy is beginning to look like the system by which electorates decide which politician gets to Order Diazepam Usa implement what the markets dictate. The people in this very powerful sector are Order Diazepam Usa worth learning more about. And the good news is, when Order Diazepam Usa you listen to them in their own words, that can Order Diazepam Usa actually be pretty entertaining. And humanising.

The first batch of posts is Order Diazepam Usa a series of profiles of different actors who work in the Order Diazepam Usa City. You can read the whole thing here.

The closest thing to this on Wall Street is Karen Ho’s book Liquidated, which I wrote about here.

From Reuters:

Nigeria’s central bank plans to diversify its $33 billion in foreign exchange reserves away from Order Diazepam Usa the dollar by switching a tenth of the stockpile into yuan, underlining the Order Diazepam Usa momentum behind China’s drive to internationalise its currency.

“We are Order Diazepam Usa looking at anything to start with from 5 to 10 percent of our reserves,” central bank governor Lamido Sanusi said on Monday.

The central bank had Order Diazepam Usa already said that it was considering reducing its reliance on the Order Diazepam Usa dollar, which economists say accounts for the bulk of its $32.96 billion in reserves . The bank does not publish the Order Diazepam Usa currency composition of its assets.

But Sanusi, speaking to Order Diazepam Usa CNBC news by telephone from China, said Africa’s second-largest economy was not abandoning the dollar and euro. “They are going to remain an important part of our holdings,” he said.

Continue reading for more analysis of the decision. From what I’ve seen, CBN seems to be the first central bank to do this.

See also FT TIlt for more analysis.

If you have been following the news, you know about the shake-up, the rescue and the proposal to buy off bad loans. Reuter’s report on the current state of the industry:

Two of Nigeria’s nine rescued banks are Order Diazepam Usa in talks with foreign investors about recapitalisation but most of the Order Diazepam Usa others are more likely to be taken over by local rivals, banking sources said on Thursday.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s second-biggest economy rescued nine lenders deemed to Order Diazepam Usa be dangerously undercapitalised in a $4 billion bailout last year. The central bank has Order Diazepam Usa been trying to find new investors to help recapitalise them since then.

Nigeria has set up a state-run asset management company (AMCON) to Order Diazepam Usa help absorb up to 2.2 trillion naira of bad bank loans, but this Order Diazepam Usa will only bring the rescued lenders back to zero shareholder funds.

“AMCON will do the Order Diazepam Usa non-performing loan purchase but after that there will still be a Order Diazepam Usa hole, and that hole will have to be filled through mergers,” one senior banking source said.

Banking sources said two of the lenders — Bank PHB and Union Bank — were in talks with foreign investors.

Four more are Order Diazepam Usa talking to local banks, one has raised funds and will scale down to Order Diazepam Usa survive, while two others have yet to find potential suitors, the Order Diazepam Usa sources said.

Read in full here.

Reuters: The bank expects economic expansion of 4.6 percent in 2011 and Order Diazepam Usa estimates the region grew by between 1.0 and 1.1 percent in 2009, said Andrew Burns, the Order Diazepam Usa bank’s manager of global macro economic trends.

The crash of 2008 revealed the flaw in the euro’s construction, as each member country had Order Diazepam Usa to rescue its own banking system instead of doing it jointly. The Greek debt crisis brought matters to Order Diazepam Usa a climax. If member countries cannot take the next steps forward, the Order Diazepam Usa euro may fall apart, with adverse consequences for the EU.

Check out the full article here.

And while you are at it, have a look at Krugman’s column, The Making of a Euromess.

I was just thinking of writing a Order Diazepam Usa column on the new term limit imposed by the Central Bank of Nigeria on bank CEOs when Order Diazepam Usa I saw this thoughtful Next editorial Buy Ambien How To:

Is the CBN too powerful?

In the Order Diazepam Usa national confusion over our president who has vanished into thin air, a Order Diazepam Usa significant but little remarked event occurred earlier this week. The Central Bank announced that Order Diazepam Usa it was retroactively imposing a 10-year limit over the tenure of bank CEOs, effective July 31.

It was not lost on most discerning observers that Order Diazepam Usa the primary targets of this new policy appeared to be two of our most prominent bank chiefs, Tony Elumelu, who Order Diazepam Usa engineered a takeover of UBA by the much smaller Standard Trust Bank that Order Diazepam Usa he used to run six years ago; and Jim Ovia, who Order Diazepam Usa built Zenith Bank from scratch and made it a ubiquitous presence.

The legality of the Order Diazepam Usa CBN decision is hardly in question: we have a central banker so powerful that Order Diazepam Usa it can dissolve the boards of banks, dismiss their executives, dictate their operations and Order Diazepam Usa pretty much act in almost any way it pleases.

The necessity for Order Diazepam Usa such level of authority is not hard to see. The banking system of any country plays an Order Diazepam Usa outsize role in the national economy. Poorly regulated or supervised, banks are Order Diazepam Usa quite capable of destroying the economy and impoverishing the rest of us. The United States barely dodged the Order Diazepam Usa bullet in the last quarter of 2008, when its banks tottered and Order Diazepam Usa nearly collapsed, bringing the world’s financial system down along with it. And the Order Diazepam Usa level of sheer criminality in our banking system, exposed in the Order Diazepam Usa past seven months only because a complicit Central Bank governor was replaced with a Order Diazepam Usa more alert one, was an object lesson in the need to Order Diazepam Usa guide the banking system with a firm hand.

No one can Order Diazepam Usa deny that the wretched excesses of banking chiefs with supersized egos, exemplified by Cecilia Ibru at Oceanic Bank and Order Diazepam Usa Erastus Akingbola at Intercontinental, made an aggressive posture by the Central Bank an Order Diazepam Usa urgent imperative.

But the Order Diazepam Usa question needs to be asked: should the Central Bank be assuming the Order Diazepam Usa roles of board directors to dictate how long a chief executive may serve? Heavily regulated though they are, unlike, say, a Order Diazepam Usa cement company or a flour mill, banks nonetheless remain the property of private investors, and Order Diazepam Usa in the absence of a specific regulatory breach by identifiable bankers, should the Order Diazepam Usa Central Bank be in the business of stipulating how long they may serve? Setting term limits, as a Order Diazepam Usa general principle, of course works well in politics and government. The basic assumption, which is Order Diazepam Usa well founded in our experience of the frailties of leaders, is Order Diazepam Usa that power corrupts, and the earlier we can kick the bums out, generally the Order Diazepam Usa better for the state.

This may, of course, not necessarily work in private enterprise. Bill Gates built Microsoft from Order Diazepam Usa the scratch and ran it for 25 years. The mercurial Jack Welch, during a Order Diazepam Usa two-decade tenure, rebuilt General Electric into at one time the world’s largest company by market capitalisation. And in our own country, Atedo Peterside founded and Order Diazepam Usa ran IBTC for nearly 20 years, making it one of the Order Diazepam Usa country’s most respected banks.

Central Bank officials justify their latest action thus: A banking license is Order Diazepam Usa a rare privilege, granted on the implicit assumption that the Order Diazepam Usa holder will act in the highest traditions of prudence and Order Diazepam Usa restraint, and essentially run a bank in the best interests not only of depositors and Order Diazepam Usa shareholders but of the public at large. Needless to say, many of our most powerful bankers failed that Order Diazepam Usa test in recent years, culminating in last year’s crisis that Order Diazepam Usa has forced the treasury to pony up about N1 trillion to Order Diazepam Usa rescue the banks lest the economy collapse. That’s a number with a lot of zeroes to clean up after Mrs. Ibru’s mess.

Officials also argue that Order Diazepam Usa banks are unique because they hold custody of other people’s money to Order Diazepam Usa trade with, with the clear understanding in the public mind that Order Diazepam Usa the government, by giving them such a right, is putting the Order Diazepam Usa full faith and credit of the public treasury behind them. And this Order Diazepam Usa is not simply a shareholder matter. In general, for every one naira shareholders place in a Order Diazepam Usa bank, the public deposits six, seven, eight, maybe even N20. This distinguishes a Order Diazepam Usa bank from Guinness or Chicken Licken.

Crucially, officials argue that Order Diazepam Usa our recent experience makes it a matter of prudence and commonsense to Order Diazepam Usa impose limits on the tenure of banking chiefs. “The certainty that Order Diazepam Usa they can stay as long as they wish and maybe even transmute to Order Diazepam Usa bank chairman makes some CEOs act with impunity,” one senior regulator told us last week. “Knowledge that there will be change conditions behavior.”

There lies the Order Diazepam Usa rub. Those leery of a Central Bank with untrammeled powers say that Order Diazepam Usa the CBN, by making such a sweeping rule regarding tenure, is Order Diazepam Usa inadvertently admitting its own failure to regulate and supervise the banking system. Were the Order Diazepam Usa CBN competent in the discharge of its duties, it would have Order Diazepam Usa had a bit more confidence to prevent widespread abuse by bank CEOs and Order Diazepam Usa to punish rogue bank chiefs where the situation demands. As one senior banker tells us, “a one size fits all rule does not often work well.”

Cynics might feel free also to Order Diazepam Usa point out that Tunde Lemo, a powerful deputy governor of the Order Diazepam Usa CBN, was directly in charge of banking supervision over the past few years that Order Diazepam Usa the most reckless behaviour on the part of bank CEOs occurred. It would not be Order Diazepam Usa unfair, and might even be somewhat generous, to accuse Mr. Lemo of negligence. But a Order Diazepam Usa term limit apparently does not apply to him.

It is Order Diazepam Usa instructive that the bank chiefs immediately affected have refrained from raising any hackles regarding their sudden forced exit. In one fine example, Mr. Elumelu immediately got his board to Order Diazepam Usa announce that a succession plan was in place and appears to Order Diazepam Usa want a tidy exit that does credit to the UBA, as he makes clear elsewhere in this Order Diazepam Usa newspaper.

Our view is Order Diazepam Usa that, while the CBN governor had got most of the big things right so far in his turbulent nine-month tenure, one must always be Order Diazepam Usa wary of a government official with power to do almost anything.

We will remain vigilant.

From FT reporter Tom Burgis:

Two of Nigeria’s most prominent bank chief executives are Order Diazepam Usa to be forced to stand down under new rules introduced by the Order Diazepam Usa central bank as part of the governor’s ongoing tussle with some of the country’s most powerful tycoons.

Lamido Sanusi, who Order Diazepam Usa took over as governor in June, has already rocked the financial sector in Africa’s second largest economy, dismissing the executivesof eight banks during a Order Diazepam Usa debt crisis brought on by reckless lending. The central bank bailed out stricken banks to Order Diazepam Usa the tune of $4bn.

In the latest move, the country’s 24 banks have Order Diazepam Usa been instructed to place a 10-year limit on the tenures of chief executives. “All CEOs who Order Diazepam Usa would have served for 10 years by July 31 2010 shall cease to Order Diazepam Usa function in that capacity and shall hand over to their successors,” the central bank said.

The purpose of the new rules was to address “corporate governance issues”, the bank said.

Full story.

Check here for reactions from Nigerians.

The Nigerian government has Order Diazepam Usa decided to implement a common year-end for Nigerian banks. The point is Order Diazepam Usa that, because banks have had different fiscal cycles they could move money around amongst each other to Order Diazepam Usa inflate the value of their total assets. Which was part of what Order Diazepam Usa contributed to the banking crisis of ’09. The immediate reaction:

Already reports from Order Diazepam Usa the banks reveal that the inflated figures usually declared as value of total assets would shrink noticeably. A source at the Order Diazepam Usa First Bank who pleaded anonymity told NEXT, “You should expect shrinking in the Order Diazepam Usa total asset positions of the banks. That has already started to Order Diazepam Usa manifest in the industry.” The source added, ‘‘Whether or Order Diazepam Usa not the banks declare losses, the books would shrink. The same money people kept circulating and Order Diazepam Usa adding to their books would no longer be available. We were more than Order Diazepam Usa double counting the same money, and this was possible because the Order Diazepam Usa banks had different accounting year end. ‘‘

As I wrote in my column of today, Nigerian banking sector is corporate Nigeria. From the same Next report:

Another banker observed that, “The stock market would run into more trouble. About 60% of the market’s All Share Index (ASI) is Order Diazepam Usa controlled by banks. Listed securities are mostly banks. With this Order Diazepam Usa they would sell down. It means they would release more into the Order Diazepam Usa market and then prices would further go down. One thing is Order Diazepam Usa certain; the ASI would be further depressed.”

60%!? We have not started building a financial sector at all!

I am just about to finish reading anthropologist Karen Ho‘s Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street. She carried out seventeen months of fieldwork on Wall Street, interviewing and Order Diazepam Usa observing investment bankers. Actually, she started out as a rookie analyst working in management consulting in a Order Diazepam Usa hybrid investment and commercial bank. She had the intention of doing some pre-fieldwork study before going back to Order Diazepam Usa 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 Order Diazepam Usa central things she studied during her fieldwork.

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

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

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

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

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

It is Order Diazepam Usa perhaps obvious from this post that a lot of things are Order Diazepam Usa still not clear, at least to me. Newspaper commentaries I have Order Diazepam Usa been reading since the banking crisis started have not helped me much. This is Order Diazepam Usa probably due to the fact that we are always too quick to Order Diazepam Usa 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 Order Diazepam Usa might lead to a better understanding of what happened. As if the Order Diazepam Usa only reason the banks are in trouble is because they gave out too much in loans.

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

Financial Times’ Gillian Tett reviews Karen Ho’s Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street:

Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street
By Karen Ho
Duke Press £16.99, 392 pages

When I first started covering finance for Order Diazepam Usa the FT, I used to get embarrassed when asked about my academic past. Before I became a Order Diazepam Usa journalist, I did a PhD in social anthropology, a branch of social science that Order Diazepam Usa endeavours to understand the cultural dynamics of societies based on grass-roots analysis.

Back in the Order Diazepam Usa pre-credit crisis days, bankers tended to consider degrees in anthropology to Order Diazepam Usa be rather “hippy”. As one banker told me; the Order Diazepam Usa only qualifications that really commanded status were those linked to Order Diazepam Usa economics, maths, physics and other “hard” sciences – or, at a pinch, an MBA.

Not anymore. As the Order Diazepam Usa financial disasters of the past two years have unfolded, it has Order Diazepam Usa become painfully clear that bankers placed far too much faith on their quasi-scientific models. It has Order Diazepam Usa also been evident that a grasp of cultural dynamics is critical in understanding how modern finance works – or doesn’t. Consequently, the Order Diazepam Usa idea of using the social sciences to understand money is becoming fashionable in some quarters.

Given all that, Karen Ho has Order Diazepam Usa picked an excellent time to publish her fascinating new study – or “ethnography” – of Wall Street banks. Ho is Order Diazepam Usa currently a professor of social anthropology at the University of Minnesota. A decade ago, however, she was an Order Diazepam Usa employee of Bankers Trust, formerly a powerful Wall Street banking giant, and Order Diazepam Usa carried out research among a number of banks.

As field-sites go, Wall Street is Order Diazepam Usa not classic anthropological territory: ethnographers typically work in remote, third-world societies. Ho admits that Order Diazepam Usa studying banking tribes was hard: “The very notion of pitching a tent at the Rockefellers’ yard, in the Order Diazepam Usa lobby of JP Morgan or on the floor of the Order Diazepam Usa New York Stock Exchange is not only implausible but also might be Order Diazepam Usa limiting and ill-suited to a study of the ‘power elite’,” she writes. Continue reading…