Banking

Brilliant publication, The Economist's current debate on banking is quite interesting on whether more competition makes banking more dangerous or not.

I believe the core of the problem is the expertise. Expertise in understanding the financial products, which is a scarce resource. And expertise is linked to competition.

1) Competition with more / new banks; then banking is more dangerous (lack of scarce resource)
2) With existing banks getting more competitive; then again more dangerous considering the nature of the industry.

Tripled Magic Words

MORE BACKGROUND

Having grown up in a business orientated and intellectual family environment made the biggest impact on the way of life. On paternal side, dad a self made tradesman, cousins manufacturers with two factories and few stores in various countries. On maternal side more professions orientated from CFO to accountant, nurse, teacher, engineer. My views have always been taken very seriously by my businessmen paternal sides and I was always asked what I thought on specific cases.

Not only in the family but also in all jobs I have worked in by my seniors. Developing an economic model to decide whether to buy a large portfolio of houses was one of those.

Book of the month

It is very exciting days.

"Between Recession and Depression" will be featured as the book of the month in May.

Further details will be coming at the end of April.

Published Businessweek Background of Author in November 2008
BACKGROUND

Ms. Zozan Yilmaz is the Financial Controller at GP Bullhound Limited. Prior to joining GP Bullhound, she was working at Big Lottery Fund as Grant Accountant. During this time she has managed budgets, cash flow forecasts and management accounts reports for various programmes in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. She also did management accounts in Housing Association where she assisted the Finance Director in building an economic model in deciding to buy a ... large portfolio of houses. She completed her Masters Degree in Financial and Business Economics at University of Essex. She is currently at strategic level of CIMA.

Bayes's Theorem

The theorem is used in many different areas such as modelling climate change, predicting the behaviour of stock markets, a different approach than Blaise Pascal's.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

It is that time of the year again. Counting backwards started both for Christmas and New Year.

Merry Christmas and a happy - peaceful new year.

GOLD STANDARD SYSTEM

As a current debate topic, few notes from ‘Between Recession and Depression’ are as below;

The main advantages are:

• Limiting the governments’ power in creating inflation through issuing excess paper currency,
• Creating certainty in international trade through fixed pattern of exchange rates

The main disadvantage is:

• Being a barrier in the flexibility of the supply of money as the supply of gold is not close the growing needs of world economy’s supply needs.

"Between Recession and Depression" on Amazon Kindle

"Between Recession and Depression" is available to purchase on Amazon Kindle for technology fans.

ECONOMICS BOOKS

As empirical economics has the characteristics of being a social science, which gains more weight in “crises” there has been a huge interest in it over the last two - three years. The number of people who are interested in the subject increased although still the theories, diagrams; thick books make it quite uninteresting to read any article or book.

So, the option is to simplify it. As Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous quote of “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” says and put in the synopsis of my book. Then comes the feedback from the people who have never studied economics that they enjoyed it.

GOLD PRICES

Gold is probably the oldest instrument of commodities market with a history going back to seven millenniums.

Can recent high price within the range of $1,250 per ounce - already 20% higher than February level – be an indication of conventional wisdom in finance theory?