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Bank Systems & Technology: The Blog

« October 2005 | Main | December 2005 »

One of these days I'd like to pick up the paper and read an article about how there was a crisis averted due to superior long-range planning by a government agency.

In the meantime, we get the GAO describing the inability of various government agencies to come to a consensus on who should be in charge of delivering expertise in anti-terrorist-financing to countries that need our help.

I truly hope they figure it out before FEMA gets involved.

The NY Times story:
U.S. Lacks Plan to Curb Terror Funds, Agency Says
http://nytimes.com/2005/11/29/national/nationalspecial3/29terror.html

The GAO study:
Better Strategic Planning Needed to Coordinate U.S. Efforts to Deliver Counter-Terrorism Financing Training and Technical Assistance Abroad
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0619.pdf

Since September 2005, the three major consumer credit reporting agencies have been required to provide upon request free annual credit reports. So, to see what the agencies have on record, I sent many of my personally-identifying characteristics through a secure Internet connection in exchange for comprehensive reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

The Chicago Merc has announced that it will introduce housing price futures in April 2006. This may shift the speculative frenzy away from real-estate into a financial instrument that measures the level of speculative frenzy in real estate. A fine distinction, but one worth making.

Personally, I don't like the idea one bit. It's one thing to have a futures contract on a bushel of wheat or a company's stock. There's an underlying commodity in a liquid exchange, and it's both very difficult and very illegal to manipulate the price of that underlying commodity. For example, if I buy futures on wheat expecting the price to go up, I can't cause a drought to further my interests. Similarly, if I sell futures on a stock, the only way I could manipulate the price of the underlying stock would run afoul of SEC regulations.

But with housing-price futures, what's to stop someone from buying their way into City Hall in order to influence local politics in such a way as to introduce distortions — either positive or negative — to housing prices? There are just too many ways for unscrupulous operators to manipulate local home-price levels in ways that would be harmful to communities. For example, if I placed a huge, pure-play bet that home prices would fall beyond expectations, I'd have an incentive to throw money at local politicians who'd cut budgets for schools, police and fire. Or, if I wanted home prices to rise, I'd want to pay off the mayor to not make any decision that could possibly jeopardize the rise in local home prices, no matter the impact on residents.

That's not to say such unscrupulous behavior isn't already happening. It's just that making it so easy will bring a great deal more money to the table, which might make for a rocky future for those living in one of the 10 cities slated for coverage by housing-price futures.

- AP article.

- CME's Sept. 27th announcement

- CME's earlier announcement of a letter of intent with MACRO Securities Research and Fiserv/CSW.

Back in business school, on my first day of the required Marketing class, the professor put a slide up on the board that said something to the effect of: "More of today's CEOs have risen to the top through the marketing function than from any other area of business."

Of course, hyping one's own field of interest is something you'd certanly expect a marketing professor to do. Nevertheless, the slide made an impression. Was there something about Marketing, compared to Finance, Operations or anything else, that generates leaders?

Or is there some other explanation?

Security firm F-Secure has the details of the phishing attack on Swedish bank Nordea, as well as several other informative entries in their security blog.

Before becoming a chronicler of the banking industry, I worked as a database developer. I mostly worked with an obscure hierarchical database tool called Omnis, which had the claim to fame of being the first cross-platform (Mac/PC) database for the first GUI version of Windows. Subsequently, I left the programming game to get an MBA and then, to make a long story short, here I am.

Now that I'm also managing the Web sites for CMP Media's financial industry publications, I've found it necessary to bone up on my technical skills. Thus, I've been taking evening classes on how to develop web-based database systems using Oracle and ColdFusion.

So for the first time, I'm using a true relational database system instead of an outmoded and theoretically unsound hierarchical method of structuring data. I'm using SQL instead of procedural code, and with the help of Joe Celko's excellent book on SQL Programming Style, I now understand the difference between the two. What used to take me a really long time and a big bundle of code can now be done in a single statement.

Similarly, as an old-school thick-client developer, I have found the Web to be an exciting method of deploying applications relative to distributing code updates to each user. I know, this is stuff that was a big deal about 8 years ago. But it's one thing to read and write about it, and another to build something in a day that used to take a week.

Which leads me to the question of the day: Is your IT staff trapped in the ice? Take it from this cro-magnon developer, this is a fast-moving industry, and if you're not staying on top of the trends and constantly challenging yourself, you're going to be obsolete in no time.

Technology pundits have been debating about whether Apple Computer's video iPod, and by extension, video cell phones and other video-enabled mobile devices, will take off. I wouldn't bet against it, but not because I think that we'll watch repurposed television programs on these devices. Rather, it's because there's an enormous potential to create custom media clips designed expressly for the new delivery channel. While the focus has been on Disney/ABC programs and music video, it's business-related content that may eventually drive adoption.

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