{"id":1769,"date":"2012-05-09T06:41:17","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T04:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/blog\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2012-05-09T06:41:17","modified_gmt":"2012-05-09T04:41:17","slug":"la-esquizofrenia-del-negocio-bancario","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/la-esquizofrenia-del-negocio-bancario\/","title":{"rendered":"The schizophrenia of the banking industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"There is something worse than being poor and insolvent, and that is having to hide one\u2019s poverty whilst feigning opulence and grandeur. Woe betide anyone who has to pretend to be rich, when they are not, just to keep their business afloat! For insolvency and poverty, when faced with sincerity and honesty, become more dignified, more hopeful and less miserable. The fact is that working in a sector such as banking\u2014which necessarily requires those in the business to feign wealth and stability in order to win the trust of their customers\u2014is something one can live with when the bank is genuinely wealthy and solvent. But when the business goes awry and the leverage inherent in banking itself completely erodes the solvency and soundness of the institutions, that fa\u00e7ade of opulence becomes a macabre lie, resulting in the schizophrenic loss of all contact with reality\u00a0(as we said inEuroschizophrenia<\/a>) on the part of the salespeople. It\u2019s like crossing the desert wrapped up warm, without any water, and having to act all cocky and haughty as if the heat, the exhaustion and the thirst didn\u2019t exist. Surreal.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Surrealism then reaches appalling depths of baseness, leading bank employees to make absurd and deplorable claims about the \u00absoundness\u00bb of the institutions they work for. Most were never advisers but mere salespeople, and today many are nothing more than crude charlatans. We see examples of this everywhere, such as when, following a state intervention (yet another entity that must conceal its insolvency at all costs) or a takeover by another larger bank and\/or one with lower levels of insolvency, employees claim that their long-suffering customers\u2019 money is now finally much safer than before (sic). In other words, they have spent years defending the bank\u2019s solvency and independence tooth and nail, and the moment it is bailed out or taken over, they insist that from that moment on, the bank is finally solvent enough for its customers to keep their savings there: \u00abNot before, but now\u2026 I mean it, honestly\u2026 I swear, on these\u2026 I swear by the Baby Jesus\u2026 it\u2019s the best thing that could have happened to us\u2026 our credit rating will now be\u2026 few institutions can say the same\u2026 we\u2019re now much stronger and more solvent\u2026 I\u2019ll set aside some preference shares, mortgage bonds or guaranteed structured products for you \u2013 they\u2019re flying off the shelves, you know\u2026\u00bb<\/em> We have even had to put up with hearing that an institution that has been placed under administration or bailed out is now \u00abthe most solvent in Spain\u00bb, simply because the government has injected enough funds into it to enable it to open for business the very next morning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And speaking of Spain\u2019s major banks, we have also seen how, a few months ago, the Bot\u00edn family opted for the first time to receive their dividends in cash rather than shares, effectively \u2013 to a certain extent \u2013 abandoning their own ship whilst it was in the midst of a crisis. Obviously, the Bot\u00edns have made a killing from that swap, given that their bank\u2019s share price has continued to plummet unstoppably, and they could now buy them back at a price well below that\u2026 although I don\u2019t know why, but I have a hunch that perhaps they won\u2019t do that either.<\/p>\n

In short, whilst the entire Spanish banking sector is fighting tooth and nail against imminent collapse, savers end up getting scratched and bitten. Today, long-suffering investors find themselves faced with walking zombies who try to conceal their rottenness with their finest venues<\/span><\/del> silks, jewellery and garish make-up. The bankers could not care less that, in order to give the impression of solvency, they have to falsify the value of their assets, to swindle savers into buying shares when the company goes public<\/a>, or that, in order to balance their books, they have to deceive their customers in the cruellest and most dishonest way. No. The only thing that matters to them is surviving at any cost the bankruptcy in which they have been languishing for more than three years now. And to that end, any trick is fair game: political pressure, influence peddling, unspeakable threats to demand bailouts and financial favours, accounting offences, manipulated valuations and audits<\/a>, dishonest practices in the property and insurance sectors, aggressive and misleading fundraising and client-acquisition campaigns, abuses of trust on a scale worthy of a magistrates\u2019 court, all manner of lies and falsehoods designed to snatch clients from the clutches of the competition, and a long and sickening list of other such things.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As has become evident recently, there is nothing more dangerous and lethal to the interests of savers and investors than a bank on its last legs. And today in Spain, every single bank is in that state. We are therefore witnessing a macabre banking beauty contest, where the \u2018Misses\u2019 strut down the catwalk in their finest finery, striking poses and wearing their best make-up. They are doing everything they can to project an image that belies the dire reality in which they are struggling to survive. For the very essence of their business lies in the trust they inspire in their customers, and that is too heavy a burden for their current emaciation and decay. On the catwalk, there is no longer any glamour, but rather consumptive zombies with grotesque make-up, who seek our money in exchange for illusory guarantees and security. But they lost both those virtues during the property and credit bubble of the last decade. It was precisely during those times that they all felt like Miss Universe in a national beauty contest, where an adoring public cheered them on, applauded them and showered them with compliments like never before.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cFew see who we really are, but everyone sees how we appear to be\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli (1469\u20131527)<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hay algo peor que ser pobre e insolvente, y es que adem\u00e1s se deba esconder la misera y simular opulencia y grandeza. \u00a1Ay de quien deba disfrazarse de rico, sin serlo, para poder subsistir en su negocio! Porque la insolvencia y la pobreza, con sinceridad y honradez se tornan m\u00e1s dignas, m\u00e1s esperanzadas y menos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,51,45,40,52,37,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asesoramiento-patrimonial-deportistas-artistas","category-banca","category-asesoramiento-deportistas-artistas","category-gestion-financiera","category-asesoramiento-patrimonial-multi-family-office","category-reflexion","category-asesoramiento-patrimonial-multi-family-office-crear-mi-propio-family-offices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}