Is life getting back to normal?
As you prepare the themes in the final section of the P4 syllabus guide (“emerging themes”) it might be interesting to know that after a recent trip to Zurich, Switzerland, I asked my friends in the financial industry what was happening these days after all the drama of the bailouts and credit crunches.
They told me that life is getting back to “normal”: the banks are making money again; he said: “the bonuses will be back: borrowing at 0% from the central banks and investing in corporate bonds at 1% and 2% means unlimited, riskless profit… nothing has changed, except that there are fewer banks, making larger profits.”
The French have a saying: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose” (the more things change, the more they stay the same).
