I fight against inequality, on the side of the opportunity enablers, not on that of the wealth redistribution profiteers

Around the world, government market interferences and many other inequitable arrangements, is  generating a dangerous inequality that will come back to bite us all... innocent or not.

But I come from a country, Venezuela, where a Minister of Education belonging to Hugo Chavez 21st Century Socialism stated: “The campaign against poverty should not help to move up the most needy to the middle class, since that could cause these to become ‘escuálidos’”, meaning opposition. 

In my homeland I now fight for the sharing out of all net oil revenues in equal parts among the citizens. That so that the government who currently  receives 97 percent of Venezuela´s exports, don't use those revenues to enrich itself and torment the citizens.

Thinking back, what got me started on that, was an experience as the first diversification manager at the Venezuela Investment Fund that was supposed to manage oil revenues, 1974,  a post to which I resigned after only two weeks, having convenced myself it was all just a cover up for politicians and technocrats to do what they wanted with our oil revenues.

So, as you can understand, I have experiences which lead me to believe that the worst part with taxes, is quite often not the tax evader, nor the taxman, but the tax revenue abusers. And so, when thinking about the need of fighting inequality, the last thing I want is for that fight to fall into the hands of any wealth redistribution profiteers... be those profits financial or political.

So what could we do? Perhaps all of us citizens could deposit annually 10% of our income and 1% of wealth in a Big Pro-Equality Pot, and thereafter just share it all out in equal parts among all of us citizens. There should be no or absolutely minimum government intervention, and the operations could be contracted out to the debit card company that charges the lowest fees. Any citizen paying into the pot more than what he receives, should of course be able to deduct that difference from his ordinary taxes.

The beauty of that wold be that since the Pot would be strictly a citizen to citizen responsibility, which did not involve any Sheriff of Nottingham taxman, it would be so much easier to apply social sanctions for its avoidance.

But, much much more important than any ex-post wealth redistribution, is the ex ante enabling of opportunities, since only that could  help us all to move forward.

For instance I have been fighting for soon two decades, against the credit-risk-weighted capital requirements imposed by bank regulators that favors the access to bank credit of The Safe, like the “infallible sovereigns”, the AAArisktocracy and housing. And that thereby odiously discriminates against the access to bank credit of "The Risky", like SMEs and entrepreneurs.

What got me started on that was when in the mid 90s I began to suspect that a dangerous credit-risk aversion was being imposed on our banks by the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision. And then reading the following passages from John Kenneth Galbraith’s “Money: Whence it came where it went”.

“The function of credit in a simple society is, in fact, remarkably egalitarian. It allows the man with energy and no money to participate in the economy more or less on a par with the man who has capital of his own. And the more casual the conditions under which credit is granted and hence the more impecunious those accommodated, the more egalitarian credit is… Bad banks, unlike good, loaned to the poor risk, which is another name for the poor man.”

“For the new parts of the country [USA’s West]… there was the right to create banks at will and therewith the notes and deposits that resulted from their loans…[if] the bank failed…someone was left holding the worthless notes… but some borrowers from this bank were now in business...[jobs created… It was an arrangement which reputable bankers and merchants in the East viewed with extreme distaste… Men of economic wisdom, then as later expressing the views of the reputable business community, spoke of the anarchy of unstable banking… The men of wisdom missed the point. The anarchy served the frontier far better than a more orderly system that kept a tight hand on credit would have done…. what is called sound economics is very often what mirrors the needs of the respectfully affluent.”

What could we do about that? Obviously getting rid of those credit risk weighted capital requirements for banks, and just have one single capital requirement, perhaps 10 percent, on all assets.

But unfortunately, when I hear about “we have to fight against inequality”, I hear much too often the voices of inequality profiteers, not at all interested in either enabling opportunities or redistributing efficiently.

PS. There's a world of difference between a redistribution of wealth cost of let us say 2 percent and one of 80 percent.

PS. #WEF #Oxfam #Davos What is the wealth of 62, $1.76 trillion, divided by 3.6 billion? What happens the day after if that inequality is gone? The problem is not that some are wealthy but if how they became wealthy blocks the opportunities of other.

PS. My Tax Paradise

PS. In fact “The wealth of 62 richest equals that of 3.6 billion poorest” is a deviously false and odiously divisive statement 

PS. Universal Basic Income is being studied and the redistribution profiteers will do all they can to have it fail. 

Kafka and global banking

My partner was on the phone to his bank. From the tone of his voice, I realized that the matter discussed was delicate. He explained to the person on the other end of the line that some of the withdrawals made from his account through an ATM machine were not his, and that they were therefore fraudulent.

 

Initially, things did not go well. An anonymous voice responded that unfortunately, in the bank’s opinion, the withdrawals seemed to be in line with the regular movement registered for the account and there seemed to be no indication of irregular activity that could be evidence of fraud. The sad implication of this is that the answer implied that the perpetrator of the fraud was my partner himself.

 

The next few weeks were a nightmare for my partner. Finally, having established that the amounts withdrawn exceeded the amounts that he himself as account holder was allowed to withdraw in the same period of time, the bank finally decided things were not quite so normal and an investigation was initiated. The matter has still not been resolved, two months later.

 

The misfortune was about as traumatic for me. The mere thought that some vagabond could randomly identify my account, blithely initiate a series of ‘normal’ fraudulent withdrawals, have me lose days and maybe weeks of my life and lots of money on overdraft interest payments and phone bills while trying to sound honest over the phone in order to convince an anonymous voice on the other end makes me shudder.

 

During the ordeal I remember thinking "thank God we still have several banks to work with". Imagine if we would have had to discuss the issue with an official of the One and Only World Bank (OOWB). Without a doubt this would present us with a future full of horrendous Kafkaesque possibilities.

 

This leads me to think about the consolidation currently going on among banks. With every day that passes we have fewer and fewer banking institutions worldwide with which to work. 

This trend has been marketed as one of the seven wonders of globalization. In addition to the above-mentioned problem, which puts defenseless users on the spot, I believe the trend introduces other risks which have either not been sufficiently commented on or which have simply been ignored. Among these I can identify the following:

 

A diminished diversification of risk.  No matter what bank regulators can invent to guarantee the diversification of risks in each individual bank, there is no doubt in my mind that less institutions means less baskets in which to put one’s eggs. One often reads that during the first four years of the 1930’s decade in the U.S.A., a total of 9,000 banks went under. One can easily ask what would have happened to the U.S.A. if there had been only one big bank at that time.

 

The risk of regulation.  In the past there were many countries and many forms of regulation. Today, norms and regulation are haughtily put into place that transcend borders and are applicable worldwide without considering that the after effects of any mistake could be explosive.

 

Excessive similitude.  By trying to insure that all banks adopt the same rules and norms as established in Basle, we are also pushing them into coming ever closer and closer to each other in their way of conducting business. Unfortunately, however, nor are all countries the same, nor are all economies alike. This means that some countries and economies necessarily will end up with banking systems that do not adapt to their individual needs.

 

I remember that John K. Galbraith once wrote that the economic development of the west of USA was helped by the fact that in the eastern part of the United States, banks were big and solid but that in the west, banks tended to work with much greater flexibility. The fact that some of these banks went bankrupt from time to time was simply taken as a normal cost inherent in development. Today, Venezuela's economy might be in dire need of some Wild West banks. 

 

The cost of global assistance.  When Venezuela’s banking system went down the drain, there is no doubt that the cost of the crisis was paid integrally by the country itself. In today’s world, when we see that a series of international banks are investing in our country’s institutions, I often wonder what will happen when one of these behemoths runs into serious trouble in its own country. Will we have to pay for our part of the crisis, less than our part of the crisis or more than our part of the crisis?

 

As bank mergers and acquisitions increase and stock exchanges worldwide call for more, I analyze what happened to my partner and have my own doubts. I ask myself if we should not be imposing the creation of special reserves for especially large banks. The larger they are, the harder they fall, and the greater the need to avoid disaster. 

https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2000/02/kafka-and-global-banking.html

Virtual tulipomania in New York City

I was told  this week that New York was more beautiful than ever. The tulips planted all along Park Avenue were in full bloom in a kaleidoscope of colors.

By chance, I also read this week about the share price of one particular firm reaching the skies on a stock exchange in New York. Both things conspired to remind me of a book by John Kenneth Galbraith, A Short History of Financial Euphoria.

This book addresses a curious speculative process, which took place in  Holland around the year 1630 and which revolved around tulip bulbs. of one particular chapter of the book, The Tulipomania, I have extracted the following quotes:

“Speculation, it has been noted, comes when popular imagination settles on something seemingly new in the field of commerce or finance.” “. . . by 1636, a bulb of no previously apparent worth might be exchanged for ‘a new carriage, two grey horses and a complete harness.’” 

The value of one particular bulb, the Semper Augustus, would be the equivalent of US$ 50,000 at today’s prices! Everyone, from nobles to servants, speculated, cashing in their property and investing in flowers. Capital inflow inundated Holland. “In 1637, came the end.”

In New York, the share price of a company which initiated operations in 1995, has never registered a profit, has (according to management itself) no short-term possibility of doing so either, does not possess any major tangible assets, and has issued a management report in accordance to SEC rules and regulations in which it makes known a series of risks that would make any investor’s hair stand on end, is traded at US$ 200 per share, when it was quoted on the exchange AT US$ 10, only one year ago.

Evidently, the firm described above operates in Internet commerce, sells books and, in my humble opinion,  has joined the rank and files of the “tulipomanias”. In order to arrive at this argument, it is sufficient to analyze some of the risks the firm itself has enumerated in various reports.

The Internet, the Net, or the Web, however you wish to call it, is above else a medium for the transfer of information. In this context, developing technology known as “shopping agents” will permit clients to quickly compare one company’s prices to those of its competition.

This would seem to presage an eventual but fierce price war, an environment that is not exactly the breeding ground for profits that back the market valuation we are observing. 

The low cost of entry and the probability that sooner or later some efforts will be aimed at prohibiting any monopolistic controls of the Web are also factors which can make the advantages created by an early incursion disappear in a flash. 

This has nothing to do with the company itself. All that I’ve read leads me to believe it is well managed and that it probably has a brilliant future. The problem lies solely in the market’s irrational expectations. Today’s market value of the firm, equivalent to the share price times the amount of the shares issued surpasses US$ 33 billion.

Make your own calculations. The firm reported in 1998 total sales of US$ 610 million, a net loss of US$ 124 million and a book value (assets less liabilities) as of 31st of December 1998 of only US$ 139 million. 

Total book sales in the United States during 1998 were worth close to US$ 23 billion. If we assume that a profit margin of 8% would be reasonable, this would mean that there would be US$ 1.8 billion available to reimburse capital invested, both equity as well as debt financing. 

If we then, for the sake of simplicity assume an overall return of 10%, we can estimate the global value of companies that sell books in the United States in the order of US$ 18 billion. 

If the company that's the object of this analysis, and today commands less than 3% of market share eventually attains a whooping 20%, its value could then reach US$ 3.6 billion. 

This is not even remotely close to the market values of US $33 billio I've mentioned earlier.

This Financial Euphoria seems to have infected many firms associated with the Internet, I conclude that this must be a modern version of the speculative Dutch tulips. I also conclude that both these and the real tulips thrive in New York in spring.

From The Daily Journal, Caracas, April 30, 1999

PS. And I gave this article the following introduction in my 2006 book  "Voice and Noise"

My book, Amazon’s profits and the value of its shares

I am including below “Virtual Tulipomania in New York City,” an article that I wrote in April 1999 for the following reasons:

When I started to write this book in 2004, I fretted over having to invest tremendous efforts in getting a publisher interested and, if successful, then having to negotiate lengthily in order to defend my copyright interests. Then I discovered the existence of some new publishing facilities that allow a rookie book writer like me to outsource. As these new facilities print the book “on demand,” there is no need to invest piles of money in printing too many copies that would reflect the author’s general sense of optimism and that could only later end up as tombstones in memory of shattered dreams. Well, it so happens that the new-wave publisher I chose was recently acquired by Amazon and as the article has to do with that company, I also found the perfect excuse to include it … for a very worthy reason … that of shameless self-promotion.

As a financial analyst (which is what an economist frequently does for a living) I am especially proud of this article since it evidences how I managed and dared to question the whole dot.com boom, at its peak, just by doing some thinking on my own. Of course, now, with the profits Amazon should expect from its new investment … and my book, I guess that once again the sky should be the limit for them.

One brief note though about these new “on demand” one-at-a-time printing methods. With them it seems that what we know as “editions” first, second, third, will in fact disappear and this might negatively impact book collectors and rare-book stores. Will they disappear?

Not necessarily, since this method could make collection even more challenging as you could view each individual book as an individual edition and therefore be able to improve your collection by moving up few slots at the time, perhaps from the 12.834th to the 235th edition. Whatever, just in case, you better hedge your bets and rush out and buy a second copy of an early edition of this book. 

Given that it is so easy and inexpensive to make changes to the book by using this publishing system, we could also have an incredible amount of different editions which might make debates about the book much more interesting—in one, I would write in yellow, and in another, in blue, and so I might finally reach the green I am looking for— by seeding confusion. Then rare-book stores would have unlimited access to rarities.

Regulations as enemies of bank missions

Note: Now 25 years later, when hearing about efforts to regulate cryptocurrencies, something which will clearly dilute the “caveat emptor”, the “buyers beware” principle, again I find reasons to refer to this article.

In Venezuela, much has been discussed about the solvency of the financial intermediation entities, mainly banking. In virtue of the great attention paid to the subject of banking regulation throughout the world and our recent banking crisis being quite recent, this should not surprise us.

In the debate I think, it is important to remember, that the functions of the financial sector are not limited, simply, to return the money received from its depositors, since, if so, the traditional mattress could be sufficient to fulfill this mission.

Apart from providing other opportunities, which serve to stimulate national savings, as well as fulfilling the task of facilitating monetary flows, there are two other functions, of great social importance, that banks must comply with. The first is to be a very active agent in the process of generating wealth and the second, to collaborate in the function of democratizing capital, that is, allowing access to capital to those people who, lacking resources, have initiatives and will to work.

Supposedly, with the commitment and ability to fulfill these last two functions, the creation and distribution of wealth, both the application and the approval of a banking license were justified. How far is it from being true today! Next, I present some reflections on the subject.

In 1975 John Kenneth Galbraith, in his book entitled "Money, his origin and destiny", advanced the thesis that one of the fundamental reasons, for the past century was achieved, the economic development of the West and the Southwest of the States United, it was the existence of an aggressive and unregulated bank, which frequently broke down, causing great losses to individual depositors, but which, because of an agile and flexible credit policy, left a trail of development.

As for the democratization of capital, it is clear that the new banking regulation, now more than ever, obliges the bank to lend to the one who has and refuse as a credit client, the one who does not. The days when a banker, on the simple basis of a character trial, could approve a loan, without having to incur the cost of creating reserves, which presumes in advance the non-payment, went down in history."

Of course, with the foregoing, I do not refer to the immense amounts consumer loans. Today, we can question the wisdom of the regulator, noting the ease with which a consumer gets a loan and compare it with how difficult it can be to acquire a loan for productive purposes.

The saddest part of the regulatory chapter is that it never really immunizes us against risk. Even in portfolio based on probabilistic expectations and compensations by means of high interest rates we know that, one way or another, risk remain… and in many cases even trying to regulate, runs the risk of giving the impression that by means of strict regulations risks have disappeared. Sometimes it's in good faith... sometimes it's only faith. When for example the SEC (Venezuela) arrogantly presumes of performing a significant mission, we know it is pure baloney.

Frequently, in matters of financial regulations, the most honest, logical and efficient is simply to alert about the risks and allow the market, by assigning prices for these, to develop its own paths.

I do not propose, not for a moment, that the State abandons completely the regulatory functions, much the contrary, what I propose is that it assumes it correctly. History is full of examples of where the State, by meddling to avoid damages, caused infinite larger damages. In the case of banking regulations developed to be applied in developed countries, I am not sure we are doing our country a favor adopting them with so much fervor.

But what are we to do? Regulations are fashionable and there are many bureaucrats in the world trying to find their little golden niche. I just read an article about a county in Maryland, USA, where, in order to be able to work as an astrologer and provider of horoscopes, you need to be registered and obtain a license in order to “read the hand palms. The cost of such license is 150 dollars.”

PS. And indeed the Basel Committee's risk weighted capital requirements has caused infinite damages.

PS. The page with the details of Maryland certified astrologers has disappeared, it might have been an early case of fake news :-( Now the certification is issued by AFA Certified Astrologers - American Federation of Astrologers

Economía Hoy

http://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/1998/10/la-regulacion-como-enemigo-de-la-mision.html

There is no time for games

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote about the evolution of economic nomenclature in the context of describing the efforts of economists and politicians to soften over the impact of economic disasters. He describes how, throughout the period between 1907 until the Nixon years, the word ‘panic’ evolved into crisis, depression, recession, sideways movement and rolling readjustment. At the end of this period, the panic of 1893 would have been called a simple “growth correction”.

In Venezuela we have perfected the habit of exaggeration, and I therefore think we have never linguistically sub-estimated our economic crises. Our problem is that we have never managed to act in accordance with the gravity of our problems. We are eight months away from the swearing in of a new government, but the majority of the proposals put before us seem to be related more with actually making it there rather than with finding ways of facing the emergency situation we are in today.

In today’s economic context, we have a basic problem. The country blithely jumped onto the global wave of commercial aperture without having identified a strategy beforehand that would guarantee an acceptable level of employment. We trusted too much in the sheer power of market forces while totally ignoring the fact that sometimes these forces can work only if there is a total destruction of the existing economic structure in the country. Nobody was willing or prepared to accept such destruction, nor did anyone have much reason to accept one of such magnitude.

Unemployment grew hand in hand with the opening of the economy to global markets that implied prices at international levels, for example, for fertilizers. Instead of allowing the market in all its cruelty (supposedly temporarily), to indicate the way forward, politicians, either because their hands trembled or simply because they wished to take advantage of the added resources, let the public sector employment grow as never before.

We are at the crossroads of a new century (indeed, millennium). We know that the marginal economic value of our public expenditure is zero, zilch, zippo. We also know that we should, without much contemplation, sack almost 500,000 public employees, since these, also without contemplation, are the most probable cause of the poverty of another 5 million. What we do not know is how to go about it, especially in an electoral year.

The result is that we continue to be captives of the illusion that this massive reduction can be made only when the private sector (who’s taxes and interest rates we want increased) has supplied us with jobs to offset it. My God! We certainly seemed to have made up our mind on this particular chicken and egg situation.

The current state of the oil sector makes this structural problem even worse. If it was difficult to maintain the system with oil at US$ 15 per barrel, it must be impossible at US$ 11. The drop in oil prices, however, now gives us the excuse to review our current policies. If I were to sit down with a panel of experts and was allowed the traditional 30 seconds that is allowed an expert to solve problems, I would say:

Our priority is to generate real employment in Venezuela. If we don’t, we will never recapture the confidence of the Venezuelans, and without the latter the confidence of the international community is a moot point and may even be damaging. 

The lowering of interest rates is essential in order to kick-start this policy. In this sense, we must devalue the Bolivar now, accepting that it has already been devalued about 20% and 30%, a fact that has been hidden behind high interest rates. We should also study the possibility of changing banking regulations to allow for a system of financing based on indexed units that would allow real repayment terms for those who wish to invest in long term projects.

In order to insure that the above has real significance and does not worsen the situation even more, we must among other things: immediately reduce public payroll by 500,000 people; reactivate the construction sector; impose (without being bashful) protectionist import duties of 15-20% on all imports (except those from Colombia [Edited out: the only trading partner were we bilaterally seem to be promoting jobs and who we should invite to join us in the increase of tariffs]; and finally, reduce or even eliminate the value added tax. The reduction of the value-added tax, even though it flies in the face of fiscal balance, is a sacrifice the politicians must go through in order to make their promise of the reduction of the public sector in favor of the private one credible.

People may say that this is a Messianic proposal. In many ways they may be right. I think, however, that this alternative is based on sounder fundamentals than, say, those of the desperate Messianism which argues for the sale of PDVSA in order to balance the accounts.

The day a constitutional prohibition on new debt is put into place and the government has been limited and complies with its duties, I will be at ease with the plan to sell PDVSA in order to service our debt. In the meantime, the only patriotic thing to do is to avoid fanning the fires of waste, such as we did with the resources obtained from the oil opening.

The demands of university professors simply serve to make a point for drastic action. The professors brazenly maintain that they are 40,000 strong in 17 public universities. This translates into 2,350 per institution and they are asking for the equivalent of US$ 115,000 per head in compensation.

This is not a time for fun and games. Towards the end of June I read a statement issued by a representative of the World Bank who contemplates the possibility of a real depression in Asia. This is the first time I’ve read something like that, and knowing how discreet these officials usually are, it is frightening.

Puritanism in banking

In his book Money: Whence it came, where it went” (1975), John Kenneth Galbraith discusses banks and banking issues which I believe may be applicable to the Venezuela of today.

In one section, he addresses the function of banks in the creation of wealth. Galbraith speculates on the fact that one of the basic fundamentals of the accelerated growth experienced in the western and south-western parts of the United States during the past century was the existence of an aggressive banking sector working in a relatively unregulated environment.

Banks opened and closed doors and bankruptcies were frequent, but as a consequence of agile and flexible credit policies, even the banks that failed left a wake of development in their passing.

In a second section, Galbraith refers to the banks’ function of democratization of capital as they allow entities with initiative, ideas, and will to work although they initially lack the resources to participate in the region’s economic activity. In this second case, Galbraith states that as the regulations affecting the activities of the banking sector are increased, the possibilities of this democratization of capital would decrease. There is obviously a risk in lending to the poor.

In Venezuela, the last few years [the 1990s] have seen a debate, almost puritan in its fervor, relative to banking activity and how, through the implementation of increased controls, we could avoid a repeat of a banking crisis like the one suffered in 1994 at a cost of almost 20% of GDP. Up to a certain point, this seems natural in light of the trauma created by this crisis.

However, in a country in which unemployment increases daily and critical poverty spreads like powder, I believe we have definitely lost the perspective of the true function of a bank when I read about the preoccupation of our Bank Regulating Agency that “the increase in credit activity could be accompanied by the risk that loans awarded to new clients are not backed up with necessary support (guarantees)” and that as a result we must consider new restrictions on the sector.

It is obvious that we must ensure that banks do not overstep their bounds while exercising their primary functions—a mistake which in turn would result in costly rescue operations. We cannot, however, in lieu of perfecting this control, lose sight of the fact that the banks’ principal purpose should be to assist in the country’s economic development and that it is precisely with this purpose in mind that they are allowed to operate.

I cannot believe that any of the Venezuelan banks were awarded their charters based purely and simply on a blanket promise to return deposits. Additionally, when we talk about not returning deposits, nobody can deny that—should we add up the costs caused by the poor administration, sins, and crimes perpetrated by the local private banking sector throughout its history—this would turn out to be only a fraction of the monetary value of the comparable costs caused by the public/government sector.

Regulatory Puritanism can affect the banking sector in many ways. Among others, we can mention the fact that it could obligate the banks to accelerate unduly the foreclosure and liquidation of a business client simply because the liquid value for the bank in the process of foreclosure is much higher than the value at which the bank is forced to carry the asset on its books. In the Venezuela of today, we do not have the social flexibility to be able to afford unnecessary foreclosures and liquidations.

In order to comprehend the process involved in the accounting of losses in a bank, one must understand that this does not necessarily have anything to do with actual and real losses, but rather with norms and regulations that require the creation of reserves. Obviously banks will be affected more or less depending on the severity of these norms. Currently, a comparative analysis would show that Venezuela has one of the most rigid and conservative sets of regulations in the world.

On top of this, we have arrived at this extreme situation from a base, extreme on the other end of the spectrum, in which not only was the regulatory framework unduly flexible, but in which, due to the absence of adequate supervision, the regulations were practically irrelevant.

Obviously, the process of going from one extreme to the other in the establishment of banking regulations is one of the explanations for the severe contraction of our banking sector. Until only a few years ago, Venezuela’s top banks were among the largest banks of Latin America. Today, they simply do not appear on the list.

It is evident that the financial health of the Venezuelan banking community requires an economic recovery and any Bank Superintendent complying with his mission should actively be supporting said recovery instead of, as sometimes seems evident, trying to receive distinctions for merit from Basel (home of the international bank regulatory agencies).

If we insist in maintaining a firm defeatist attitude which definitely does not represent a vision of growth for the future, we will most likely end up with the most reserved and solid banking sector in the world, adequately dressed in very conservative business suits, presiding over the funeral of the economy. I would much prefer their putting on some blue jeans and trying to get the economy moving.

As edited for "Voice and Noise" 2006

Much more in My Voice and Noise on Subprime Banking Regulations

https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/1997/06/puritanism-in-banking.html