Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Regulation

Eliot Spitzer’s top 10 answerphone messages

10. “Hey, what’s new?” 9. “It’s Barack Obama. Remember our conversation about being my running mate? Never mind.” 8. “Ralph Nader here. Glad to hear I’m not the only politician who has to pay for it.” 7. “Hi. I’m calling from the New York Post. Would you rather be known as ‘Disgraced Governor Perv’ or…

FSA’s data hypocrisy

I had a fascinating conversation with a group of information security professionals yesterday.  We were talking around the issues of data leakage and covered a wide variety of subjects from accidental leakage to deliberate theft, from human frailties to ISO27001 standards, from the challenges of ensuring users find it easy to get the information they…

FSA’s data hypocrisy

I had a fascinating conversation with a group of information security professionals yesterday.  We were talking around the issues of data leakage and covered a wide variety of subjects from accidental leakage to deliberate theft, from human frailties to ISO27001 standards, from the challenges of ensuring users find it easy to get the information they…

The end of the EU, euro, SEPA and MiFID is nigh?

There’s been a recent storm of controversy over the ECB’s decision to accept mortgage backed bonds from Spain.  In effect, Spain has had a disastrous subprime mortgage collapse and has been bailed out by the ECB.        This Investment Markets note of last week explains the process well, saying that Spanish banks have been…

The end of the EU, euro, SEPA and MiFID is nigh?

There’s been a recent storm of controversy over the ECB’s decision to accept mortgage backed bonds from Spain.  In effect, Spain has had a disastrous subprime mortgage collapse and has been bailed out by the ECB.        This Investment Markets note of last week explains the process well, saying that Spanish banks have been…

Now Greenspan says subprime is unavoidable, but then …

After my write-up of Alan Greenspan’s speech at the end of last year, where he says the subprime crisis was unavoidable, I was reminded of one of my old presentations with a quote from Alan Greenspan, when he was head of the Fed back in October 2004: "In recent years, banks and thrifts have been…

SEPA today, SAPA tomorrow

Interesting to be in Asia at the moment, which is where I flew out to in case you were wondering yesterday.  I’m here at a major payments conference and was sorry to miss the minor "hurrah" as SEPA went live on Monday.  Whoopee-doo!  Did you see the celebrations and fireworks?  Nope?  Neither did I.  In…

SEPA today, SAPA tomorrow

Interesting to be in Asia at the moment, which is where I flew out to in case you were wondering yesterday.  I’m here at a major payments conference and was sorry to miss the minor "hurrah" as SEPA went live on Monday.  Whoopee-doo!  Did you see the celebrations and fireworks?  Nope?  Neither did I.  In…

SEPA today, SAPA tomorrow

Interesting to be in Asia at the moment, which is where I flew out to in case you were wondering yesterday.  I’m here at a major payments conference and was sorry to miss the minor "hurrah" as SEPA went live on Monday.  Whoopee-doo!  Did you see the celebrations and fireworks?  Nope?  Neither did I.  In…

SEPA today, SAPA tomorrow

Interesting to be in Asia at the moment, which is where I flew out to in case you were wondering yesterday.  I’m here at a major payments conference and was sorry to miss the minor "hurrah" as SEPA went live on Monday.  Whoopee-doo!  Did you see the celebrations and fireworks?  Nope?  Neither did I.  In…