A serial intern in the finance sector speaks: "Applying for internships is so tiresome and bruising. It's like dating, you sit by the phone waiting for a call. Back in my days at university I would get up at 5.30am or 6am. First I'd go jogging, then send out an application for an internship. Every morning. It's so painful to hear 'no' all the time."
posted by feelinglistless
on Jan 27, 2012 -
86 comments
A Swarthmore College student-reporter's
questioning of whether it is moral to go into banking sparks NYT columnist Nick Kristof to not only assert the affirmative, but to argue (in part) that in fact
more well-educated, liberally-mined people should go into "conservative" industries like banking in order to reform it from the inside. In effect, Kristof suggests, socialist-leaning, educationally-empowered students should hunker down, swallow their disdain, and apply their ideals to change finance.
Said student responds (in Slate): elite, ostensibly liberal-leaning students don't seem to be particularly discouraged from capitalism or going into banking in this climate, and probably never have been.
posted by Keter
on Jan 24, 2012 -
49 comments
We Will Survive Capitalism! flash mob with
US Uncut [previously] and the
Brass Liberation Orchestra
Previous BLO flash mobs include Bad Hotel [previously], Operation Hey Mackey [previously], and "PAY UP!" (demanding Bank of America pay their taxes). Speaking of BofA, in San Francisco on Thursday activists turned every Bank of America ATM in the city into an Automated Truth Machine, using special non-adhesive stickers designed to look exactly like BoA’s ATM interface. But instead of checking and savings accounts, these new menus offered a list of everything BoA customers’ money is being used for, including investment in coal-fired power plants, foreclosure on Americans’ homes, bankrolling of climate change, and paying for fat executive bonuses. [more inside]
posted by finite
on Jan 15, 2012 -
42 comments
Special report: China's debt pileup raises risk of hard landing. 'When China announced a nearly $600 billion package to ward off the 2008 global financial crisis, city planners across the country happily embarked on a frenzy of infrastructure projects, some of them of arguable need.' 'Barclays Capital has predicted a global recession would trigger a "hard landing" in China, with gross domestic product sinking well below the 8 percent mark seen as the minimum for assuring enough job creation to keep up with urban migration. A severe economic slump would depress land sales, a vital source of funding for local governments, and make their debt load even more precarious.'
[more inside]
posted by VikingSword
on Oct 10, 2011 -
13 comments
Chext is a site that enables the user to enter transactions and track their bank balance via SMS. People sharing a bank account can also get updates when money is spent from the account by the other person.
[more inside]
posted by reenum
on Sep 19, 2011 -
30 comments
Out of thin air? "Have you ever said something like 'Let me buy you a beer next week'? I'm sure you have. We all issue promises of this sort. And we frequently use such promises as a form of currency... I have just described a simple credit exchange. Societies rely heavily on promising-making and promise-keeping. It is the foundation of all financial markets. I'd like to point out something about the promises you make. They are made 'out of thin air.' "
[more inside]
posted by kliuless
on Apr 14, 2011 -
47 comments
Wajahat Ali, a solo practitioner from California, takes on Wells Fargo in an attempt to get his clients' home loan modified. Lots of ball dropping and passing of the buck ensues. He
describes the Kafka-esque nature of the experience.
posted by reenum
on Jun 20, 2010 -
41 comments
Who would have thought it? The UK has
withdrawn the
500 Euro note after an investigation by
SOCA discovered that 90% of the notes in circulation were linked to crime. Nicknames the ‘
Bin Laden’ (you know its out there somewhere) the purple note worth $630 is a favourite of the criminally minded due to its ultra-portability and acceptance throughout mainland Europe.
Drug investigations in Latin America time and time again turn up large amounts of currency in this form.
According to Columbian financial regulators 234K Euros was legally imported and declared into the country but trails of 600M Euros being exported were discovered. Whilst money laundering and fraud relating to the Euro is
nothing new the decision to put into circulation such a high note must now be being questioned at the highest levels.
posted by numberstation
on May 13, 2010 -
95 comments
Betting Against the American Dream. In 2005, just as Wall Street started to get cold feet about the housing market, the
Magnetar hedge fund helped create a new wave of billion-dollar mortgage-backed securities, pushed bankers to include riskier sub-prime mortgages, and then shorted the securities, making millions when the bubble finally burst. Traders on both sides of the deals pocketed enormous fees even if their banks went under when the securities failed.
Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica,
This American Life, and NPR's
Planet Money track down some of the big winners in the housing/financial crisis. No time to read or listen? It seemed so much like a scheme from
The Producers, they even recorded
a show tune to explain it all. (
Previously,
2,
3)
posted by straight
on Apr 15, 2010 -
30 comments
Amid the financial headlines (about
new banking reforms,
more bank failures, the
need for more lending by
the fat-cats, the question of whether
a European-style bonus-tax might
be possible here, and the
shrinking of the middle class), on PBS yesterday Bill Moyers wondered, in an in-depth segment (with organizers from
here and
here), whether
a new wave of populist economic activism is perhaps, despite
all odds, beginning to make
a dent after all.
posted by HP LaserJet P10006
on Dec 12, 2009 -
31 comments
A software engineer blogs about the
inept and insecure way in which a bank asks customers to file a claim when they're the victim of fraudulent transactions. Dozens of customers chime in with similar experiences, over the course of months. The bank in question contributes nothing to the conversation, and the system remains both
insecure and broken today [that last link is probably blocked by your browser or operating system, but don't worry - the form on the page doesn't work anyway].
posted by subpixel
on Nov 25, 2009 -
28 comments
North Dakota might be the butt of many
jokes. It also might have the solution to many of the financial and banking problems facing our largest states. The
Bank of North Dakota is the only state owned and operated bank in the USA.
Some see it as a model for the future of banking.
posted by Xurando
on Nov 12, 2009 -
29 comments
Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, says:
If the goal was to increase lending, well we haven't increased lending. ... Banks that were too big to fail are bigger than ever. ... When TARP was announced, the whole purpose was a statement that we're not going to let our large financial instiutions fail. And with that I think we may be in a far more dangerous place today than we were a year ago.
(via)
posted by Joe Beese
on Sep 26, 2009 -
15 comments
The Bulls vs. Bears? The incessant back and forth between
equity market longs and
shorts is well known to most retail investors via a variety of distribution channels; financial television, the print media, online news. But the really big market battle, one with the potential to impact the entire US economy, happens, as is usual in finance, just out of sight of retail eyes ...
[more inside]
posted by Mutant
on May 13, 2009 -
24 comments
