The Dog that Watches

businessweek: original article

FSA investigating banks


Britain’s finance watchdog, the FSA, is now trying to find out what and how it happened when out of the blue the banks needed bailing out by the taxpayers.

A great opportunity for those audit companies that are selected to help finding the obvious:

• The conduct of bank directors had mutated into a dogma of profitability following the juggernaut named “shareholder value”.
• Risk evaluation had dissolved into creative belief, guessing and estimation.
• At no time – until today – had those banks given enough information. The opposite with not revealing the truth but by feeding it out slice by slice the poisoned salami survived until today; shorter, though; but so far taxpayers’ digestion is still hanging in there.
• When it happened the banks’ balance sheets had already collapsed, ever since the adjustment of accounting principles is trying to catch up with what is deteriorating and factually bankrupt.

This is the second shortest version of what the watching dog called FSA will find out; the shortest version is just one word: “casino”; the longer versions will lack precision making them implausible but not any truer! So where can I collect my fees?

By the way, the Financial Services Authority, the FSA, is …

…accountable to Treasury Ministers, and through them to Parliament. It is operationally independent of Government and is funded entirely by the firms it regulates. The FSA is an open and transparent organisation and provides full information for firms, consumers and others about its objectives, plans, policies and rules…

More of that on the FSA website! In their own words! And in their own world!



Who called it watchdog? Enough!

Carpe diem!