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Shoot the messenger

20 February 2009 1 comment

Paul Penrose

Head of Research

Finextra

A poll of CEOs at Fortune 1000 companies conducted by Frost & Sullivan has concluded that the global economic slump is all the fault of 'the media', which is twisting facts and exaggerating economic statistics in a desperate bid to sell more copies and attract more eyeballs.

"Because of this, consumers and business have frozen spending, canceled projects, sold investments, and laid off workers. This has caused a downward spiral in demand and pricing that has now caused about 20 trillion dollars of damage globally," says the F&S study.

Apparently, this is not just the view of a small portion of feeble-minded, depression-addled CEOs, but a whopping 91% of those surveyed.

Never mind the catastrophic mismanagement and sheer unbridled greed of Wall Street's finest, let's just shoot the messenger instead.

Another great example of out-of-the-box, visionary thinking from the captains of industry. We can all sleep soundly, knowing that the economy is truly safe in their hands.

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A Finextra member

23 February 2009

And don't forget to shoot the prophets who saw all this coming since years. Long live Thatcherism and deregulation !

But to some extent, the complaints of those CEO's not coming from the FSI industry are understandable. They used to trust that industry, and now many companies are in trouble - even good ones, despite having done their homework. They have been taken in, just like the public and the politicians (by the way, some of those aren't crooks and not completely incompetent ...).

Solid companies are fighting for survival just because the banks are on a general strike and refuse to do their most important job - supplying liquidity to the economy, so no wonder the economy is drying up.

How to solve the dilemma ? No, shooting the bankers won't help. But we need new markets, where there is more control and hence, more trust. And the controls need to be more intelligent than Basel II, which only aggravates the situation.

How about stock markets that are attractive to investors but not attractive to gamblers ? How about named stocks with registered ownership that must be held for a minimum of twelve month ?

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Paul Penrose

Head of Research

Finextra

Member since

06 Oct 2006

Location

London

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