torsdag den 2. august 2012

Banking crisis ... what banking crisis?

Apart from the headline emulating the title of an album by Supertramp in the 1970's with a sunbathing young man in front of an industrial wasteland in the background, the headline is of course a comment to the present 'difficulties', cf. the meltdown of 2007+8 and the present LIBOR scandal, and I have to say that these things should not come as a complete surprise to people that were not born 'yesterday'.

For instance, I stumbled across the poem below that I wrote in 1995, after a certain Nick Leeson (quoting from Wikipedia) as "a former derivatives broker [committed ] fraudulent, unauthorized speculative trading [and] caused the collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest investment bank, for which he was sent to prison.[1]


 Derivation?
After lengthy negotiation Barings Bank derived salvation
from becoming a derivative of the Dutch bank ING.
The downfall of Barings derives from one employee,
deriving pleasure from playing the derivatives underivatively,
of which the management derived not even derivational knowledge,
or so we are to derive from their derivate statements.
"The largest stumbling-block during the negotiations
was the bonuses due to Management and staff!"
This was the BBC's derivation from their observation.
May we derive from that
that certain derivatives
are derivable in any circumstance
and that it is but an accidental derival
that the depositors derive rescue as well?
------------------------------
7th March 1995, Claus Piculell