Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

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Things worth reading: 4th August 2009

Things we're reading today include …   Today's must readPayFail: PayPal And Its APIs Go Down, Online Shopping Grinds To A Halt (Techcrunch)"PayPal’s online purchasing service is down for the count. While the site itself appears to be loading (though very slowly), numerous buyers and venders are reporting that sales are not going through."  …

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Things worth reading: 4th August 2009

Things we're reading today include …   Today's must readPayFail: PayPal And Its APIs Go Down, Online Shopping Grinds To A Halt (Techcrunch)"PayPal’s online purchasing service is down for the count. While the site itself appears to be loading (though very slowly), numerous buyers and venders are reporting that sales are not going through."  …

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Wall Street’s liquid workers

Fascinating article in Time Magazine about the anthropology of work and how Wall Street sets the tone and structure of work in the wider society. The headline is that Wall Street workers are liquid workers. I thought that meant that they drank a lot, but the author of Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street Karen Ho,…

Wall Street’s liquid workers

Fascinating article in Time Magazine about the anthropology of work and how Wall Street sets the tone and structure of work in the wider society. The headline is that Wall Street workers are liquid workers. I thought that meant that they drank a lot, but the author of Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street Karen Ho,…

Update on Deutsche Bank ‘spying’ scandal

After picking up on German media reports about Deutsche Bank being investigated for allegedly spying on shareholders and employees almost a month ago, the spying scandal finally hit the mainstream transatlantic media today. This was thanks to an in-depth report in the Wall Street Journal which other media, such as the Times, are reporting as…

Why Europe lacks consistent regulations

Last week, the European Commission issued a bunch of papers about the financial markets including the results of a survey on post-trade costs, a revision to bank capital and remuneration rules and more … but the most interesting document (pdf link) is probably the one that discussed the state of transposition of various directives under…

Transposition

Shamish about the Amish

We talk about community and a return to traditional values brought on by the credit crisis and the community that springs to mind as being one of the most traditional is the Amish community. The Amish community is based mainly in Pennsylvania and Indiana in the States, and continue a strict religious order that stems…

Amish-buggy

Insightful charts of the crisis

There has been lots of conversation about the disaster of financial markets over the last year, but not many placed to go to find the whole thing mapped out clearly.  The BBC has quite a good site that monitors the key events and the Credit Writedown is doing a good job of monitoring the bank…

USA triggers

Gossip about houses and mortgages

Interesting dinner last night with a bunch of guys involved in the housing markets. These are some of the UK's largest property lenders and managers. By way of example, one gentleman was telling me about his wealthy client with £100 million property portfolio … the client was trying to restructure their financing and he accused…

Deutsche Bank accused of ‘spying’

I know that some news goes under the radar but when it's major news – like the ATM malware issues mentioned earlier this week – then it is worth highlighting, and here's another one that creeped out a month ago and only just caught my eye.  This is that Deutsche Bank has been accused of…

Cisco