Financial Style Update- March 2008
Linda says: A drastic change is going to be long lasting.
By March it is quite obvious that the big debt party of the last couple of years is over and the year of the super hangover has begun!
The fashion impact of announcing astronomical losses is starting to bore to tears. This has been an overdone trend, which unfortunately is going to be trans seasonal and is having an increasingly, international flavor.
The revolutionary “in” look of the year will go to any financial institution that actually will manage to shock everyone by making money. (for the investors not the executives…..) This will be breathtaking and quite stunning.
A new class of culinary award, a variant of the Michelin star, should be awarded for the most creative accounts. Perhaps the super soufflé award for resembling a grand French culinary creation but collapsing on delicate probing or the heat of a proper audit. The super soufflé could be awarded with or without a smattering of rogue traders to add some spice to the concoction.
Accounting, normally the most staid and boring of professions, is likely to implicated in a number of superb super soufflés and transform itself into an exciting, long running series of courtroom dramas. Insolvency experts will be highly prized and a very “hot” item.
Being the CEO of certain financial institutions will be regarded as favorably as standing on street corners, scantily dressed and looking for customers. The latter business model is far more “transparent” and easily understandable, than some financial products sold by the CEOs concerned.
Inflation is back! The supposedly conquered scourge of the seventies is on everyone’s lips and evenly heavily fudged government statistics are admitting there is a problem. Only the Japanese government is running around with the proverbial white cane- unable to find any evidence of rising prices.
Complaints about rising prices of food and energy are highly fashionable. They have replaced the boasts of yesteryear of rising house prices as a favorite topic of conversation. Only if you are lucky enough to live somewhere like Dubai ( where the gas price is heavily subsidized), can you radiate the glow of rising national wealth, courtesy of the oil price.
