Snippet Of My Life Episode 15 – I Wonder Why

I am literally the last man standing in my Spanish class.  All the girls proceed to the next level.  The guys have other plans.  It appears that the girls are doing much better in languages.  I wonder why.  Must be in our DNA.

Following AIG episode, I texted my Prudential insurance agent this morning.  Do I want to know Prudential’s exposure to AIG, Lehman, and Merrill Lynch stocks?  Certainly.  Where is the promised market update?  I have no clue.  Chances are they are scrambling to measure the exact losses like the rest of the financial institutions right now, as in now.

You would have thought with the Basel II Accord’s three pillars concept implemented in some forms or another across the financial industry, the risks are well managed, the system is more resilience to shocks.  Yet, right before our eyes, we see the collapse of the giants like dominoes.  Do practitioners have what it takes to deal with the complexity of the exotic products and the financial structures?  Do they have the agility to deal with shocks – scenarios that should have been tested regularly?  Are risks thoroughly understood and monitored from the front to the back office or are the front line people too absorbed in carrying on with their daily jobs and making money?  I often have my doubt.  Time for Basel III.

Besides being a coffee boy and a note taker, nowadays I have a list to administrate.  My new neighbor constantly on a conference call, and so are some others around me.  In this office with so much surround sound, with so many people making a living by talking, I feel as though I work in a call center.  Thank God I have my Nokia phone and my MP3 collection.

No doubt this list must have a certain level of importance since I need to deal with some rather senior people from different geographies, I literally doze off for a couple of seconds every time I scroll up and down this list.  I certainly haven’t heard of countries like Kazakhstan or Qatar until now.  But look, a list is a list and it still makes me fall asleep.  My vision would go blur (much like the picture above), I would doze off for a few seconds (no kidding), wake up, do the thing I need to do, and doze off again while scrolling up or down.

People in my industry are in panic mode (the closer you are to the trading portfolios, the more intense the panic is I suppose) worrying that jobs may be lost.  I have seen the up and down cycles and I have switched in and out of different jobs and industries throughout these cycles.  The only constant is change.  Wrong!  The only constant is that whatever we are holding onto, whatever we think we own, are not permanent.  All can be taken away in a snap.

A job is a job and I am concerned about my savings more.  Time to take out my cash, buy some gold bars, and hide them underneath my bed.