Recession watch

Financial risk

Risk management status

An FT article reporting Goldman Sachs calls for greater independence of risk departments

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/02/09/52206/goldmans-sober-new-masters-of-a-battered-universe/

Government view

Alistair Darling writing in the Telegraph 7 Feb 2009 raising the prospect of de-risking Banks through (1) tightening risk management of Banks (including pay and reward linkages) and (2) implicit in the discussion he raises the prospect of separating Investment arms of the Banks from Deposit taking.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/4548092/The-era-of-risk-is-over-what-we-now-demand-of-banks-is-responsibility.html

Quants and VaR

New York Times article on ‘what led to the Financial crisis but very instructive on the use of “quants” (including a discussion of VaR) in the debacle on interviews Taleb, of the Black Swan theory, who states that you cannot just mathematically quantify risk because things will happen which fall outside of the assumptions

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04risk-t.html

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