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The problem I have with Twitter is that I cannot seem to get it on my phone. And I know that other people are having this problem.

It seems my UK Blackberry is not compatible. If Twitter is to be valuable at all (from a business or a social sense) It should be available on a mobile. But that is not the case for all.

"Last week I heard a story of how last time this sort of protest happened in the May Day riots, £20 notes were photocopied and thrown off the top of a bank. Antagonist perhaps?"

According to the Times, City workers taunted protestors with £10 notes. Story here. Is this a case of the credit crunch even hitting the ancient art of Protestor Tauting'?

Systems, technology and data management are all well and good, but they mean nothing and are worth nothing without proper business practice behind it.

The current crisis was caused (and won't be solved) by having more efficient data capture and ERM systems in place. (as nice as those systems may be) Risk management, led by people and senior managers, need to be allowed and encouraged to become involved with business decisions from start to finish.

The easy, 'close-my-eyes-and-it-will-go-away' solution would be to listen to software firms and consultants who try and sell you a wonderful ERM system that will solve ALL your problems. No bit of technology is going to solve your problems because the issues lie in relationships and communications with real people and business groups.

No problem will be solved until risk managers are given the back up to be involved with the trading floor on an day to day basis.

And today, protestors are smashing the windows at RBS at Threadneedle Street.

You go to bed in Canada and wake up with a severed Moose head in your bed? Just guessing.

Those Canadians--maybe they invested all their money in beer and ice hockey instead of sub-prime.

A robust risk culture that needs to be undertood by those actually working in risk?! Matthew, what strange and wonderfull world are describing?

Really, just post your Risk Mission Statement up on a sandwich board in the lobby of your bank's headquarters and everyone will automatically have a full understanding of the bank's risk culture. I've heard that screen savers work well in that department as well! 

As the author of said Lepus peice, I thought I would lend a comment. I do tend to prefer catchy headlines--much better than 'Use of VaR at desk level'--which had been the working title.

The humble VaR has come under intense scrutiny of late. Early last year the Bank of England issued a warning about the use of VaR. The UK central bank argued that when volatility is low in the markets, VaR tools typically offer a benign view of risk taking. This causes banks to take on more risk, which reduces market volatility. However, the Bank argued in April last year that if the market were to ever turn volatile, this dynamic could quickly unravel. The Bank estimated that a typical bank’s VaR might theoretically double, with the same assets, if volatility increased.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal this April, Bruce Wasserstein, chairman and CEO of Lazard, offered a vicious attack on VaR models. “The protective pyrotechnic mechanisms such as Value at Risk, which were supposed to predict the risk in a portfolio of assets, are duds.”

Speaking also to the Wall Street Journal this May, Malcolm Knight, the chief executive of the Bank of International Settlements does not lay all the blame on the VaR models themselves. He lays some of the blame for the current crisis in risk management on the quality of the information and its transmission along the securitisation chain.

Despite all this, of course, VaR is still widely used in the financial markets. As the financial markets have seen over the past few months, market turmoil can highlight the limitations of sophisticated measures of market risk.

VaR will continue to be used as highlighted by the banks interviewed for the research. VaR has not been discredited for us in stable market conditions, despite several market theorists who claim that the use of VaR can exacerbate market volatility.

Almost all the banks interviewed relied on historical simulation to calculate VaR. It could be argued that all risk management is based on the calculations of past numbers and market conditions.

However, great market turmoil tends to come from unexpected events that could not have been predicted by historical data modelling. This is where VaR falls short.

I'm guessing all these respondents all read the "Inane middle management tips for Dummies" Manual. I am sure there is some 20th century version of 'Let's ban Facebook' box ticking regarding the telephone or email.

But you can get into a chicken and egg thing with reputational risk.

If banks start quantifying reputational risk, and allocating capital against those risks, isn't the bank admitting that they are already engaging in activities that might effect their reputations with clients, shareholders, counterparties etc...

Come to think of it. If Bloomberg used the 'venture' money to buy back the shares from Merrill...now who was put in charge of 'ventures'..what his he to do now? And what is that guy from NY City Hall doing inside the Bloomberg NY offices? Hmmmm?