<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>End of a greedy era
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Michelle Tay
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Life in the past decade seemed like Easy Street. Need a plasma TV set? Put it on a credit card. Need to pay off the Visa? Use the MasterCard.
Banks in the United States were operating on the same principle. Assuming that home prices would keep soaring, they sold mortgages to investment banks, which in turn pooled, spliced, diced and delivered them to investors looking for fat margins.
But it backfired when borrowers began defaulting on mortgages they could not afford in the first place. Home prices plunged, giving way to the eruption of the sub-prime crisis last year.
So Easy Street turned into Skid Row, and now the world is dealing with a full-blown global financial crisis. Stock markets have suffered trillion-dollar losses and governments around the world are guaranteeing bank deposits.
As Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said last week: 'We've seen the triumph of greed over integrity; the triumph of speculation over value creation; the triumph of the short-term over long-term sustainable growth.
'It is perhaps time now to admit that we did not learn the full lessons of the 'greed is good' ideology. And today we are still cleaning up the mess.'
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has branded the past few years an 'age of irresponsibility', while French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called the financial turmoil 'the crisis of a system that has distanced itself from the most fundamental values of capitalism, which betrayed the spirit of capitalism'.
Injecting morality into financial capitalism, based on ethics and work, is now the priority, Mr Sarkozy added in a speech in Toulon last month.
In fact, the end of the 'greed is good' era has begun, said financial industry professionals whom The Sunday Times spoke to.
The crisis - which seems to be deepening by the day - has put the brakes on once-wanton spending while the 'era of excess' perpetuated by high-flying Wall Street executives has screeched to a halt.
'A lot of bankers used to take big home or car loans thinking they can easily pay them off when they get their 10-month bonus. Now, having committed to the home, they are instead slyly asking architects about cheaper materials. The mood is very sour,' said one investment banker here, who declined to be named.
'People definitely aren't spending as much or as freely as they used to,' concurred another banker, from Morgan Stanley. 'We're not expecting the fat bonuses of the good years. Plus, even if jobs are secure now, some time down the road, if there's management change, it's going to be very difficult to find another one.'
People are bracing themselves for the fact that the financial industry itself is likely to shrink. Employment will be the first to suffer, as hiring growth in this area will be cautious, said experts here.
Mr Lin Risheng, 27, is already beginning to feel the tightening effects of the job market. After leaving his assistant relationship manager job in June to do missionary work overseas, he is now having little luck getting rehired in the banking industry.
It is 'depressing' but he is undeterred. 'Finance and accounting is what I studied in university and I feel that's where my strengths lie.'
He added, however, that he will now have to be more realistic about salary levels - something mirrored by human resource experts, who expect year-end bonuses to be trimmed by as much as half.
Mr Pan Zaixian, head of financial services at search firm Robert Walters, said: 'High risk leads to high returns: If bankers and traders are raking in millions in bonuses, it is a clear sign that the bank is taking risky positions. Hence the risk-reward culture of remuneration will now be under much scrutiny.'
Even business graduates are jittery.
Mr Nick Soriano, deputy director of marketing and admissions in Nanyang Business School's Master of Business Administration (MBA) programme, said some students, especially those who were in the finance industry prior to entering the MBA programme, are now rethinking their careers.
Economists believe this is indeed the dawning of a new age of austerity. Citigroup economist Kit Wei Zheng said: 'At the very minimum, we can expect that the US consumer will cut down on his spending for at least a year. He's been living well beyond his means and that will have to come to an end.
'In Singapore, expect to see much slower consumption growth. To the extent that we'll see a recession of an unknown duration, a recovery by the end of next year is by no means guaranteed.'
Yet, there are some who believe history will always repeat itself.
Mr Daniel Long, 38, a private equity fund manager in Singapore, said: 'Things move in cycles. It's just the way the economy functions. When people are excited by a boom, they start getting aggressive. I'm sure in a few years from now, you'll see the same excesses again.'
Commodities investor Jim Rogers, 65, agreed: 'Right now, they've learnt their lesson. But in 20 years, there'll be a new generation of bankers who won't remember this and they'll do something just as bad.'
Want to restore sobriety to the financial sector? Then get back to the basics, say the experts.
That means returning to the fundamentals of prudent lending and borrowing, where the lender and borrower maintain some kind of personal responsibility for, and personal interest in, whether the person receiving the money can actually pay it back.
Mr Rogers, who lives in Singapore, added: 'If you ask me, governments are the immoral ones right now, taking assets from the people who worked hard and did a good job, and giving them to the people who were incompetent and perhaps dishonest.
'Old ladies in the Midwestern US...now have to pay higher taxes to finance...Wall Street's Maseratis. That's horribly immoral - and bad economics.' [email protected]
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Michelle Tay
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Life in the past decade seemed like Easy Street. Need a plasma TV set? Put it on a credit card. Need to pay off the Visa? Use the MasterCard.
Banks in the United States were operating on the same principle. Assuming that home prices would keep soaring, they sold mortgages to investment banks, which in turn pooled, spliced, diced and delivered them to investors looking for fat margins.
But it backfired when borrowers began defaulting on mortgages they could not afford in the first place. Home prices plunged, giving way to the eruption of the sub-prime crisis last year.
So Easy Street turned into Skid Row, and now the world is dealing with a full-blown global financial crisis. Stock markets have suffered trillion-dollar losses and governments around the world are guaranteeing bank deposits.
As Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said last week: 'We've seen the triumph of greed over integrity; the triumph of speculation over value creation; the triumph of the short-term over long-term sustainable growth.
'It is perhaps time now to admit that we did not learn the full lessons of the 'greed is good' ideology. And today we are still cleaning up the mess.'
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has branded the past few years an 'age of irresponsibility', while French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called the financial turmoil 'the crisis of a system that has distanced itself from the most fundamental values of capitalism, which betrayed the spirit of capitalism'.
Injecting morality into financial capitalism, based on ethics and work, is now the priority, Mr Sarkozy added in a speech in Toulon last month.
In fact, the end of the 'greed is good' era has begun, said financial industry professionals whom The Sunday Times spoke to.
The crisis - which seems to be deepening by the day - has put the brakes on once-wanton spending while the 'era of excess' perpetuated by high-flying Wall Street executives has screeched to a halt.
'A lot of bankers used to take big home or car loans thinking they can easily pay them off when they get their 10-month bonus. Now, having committed to the home, they are instead slyly asking architects about cheaper materials. The mood is very sour,' said one investment banker here, who declined to be named.
'People definitely aren't spending as much or as freely as they used to,' concurred another banker, from Morgan Stanley. 'We're not expecting the fat bonuses of the good years. Plus, even if jobs are secure now, some time down the road, if there's management change, it's going to be very difficult to find another one.'
People are bracing themselves for the fact that the financial industry itself is likely to shrink. Employment will be the first to suffer, as hiring growth in this area will be cautious, said experts here.
Mr Lin Risheng, 27, is already beginning to feel the tightening effects of the job market. After leaving his assistant relationship manager job in June to do missionary work overseas, he is now having little luck getting rehired in the banking industry.
It is 'depressing' but he is undeterred. 'Finance and accounting is what I studied in university and I feel that's where my strengths lie.'
He added, however, that he will now have to be more realistic about salary levels - something mirrored by human resource experts, who expect year-end bonuses to be trimmed by as much as half.
Mr Pan Zaixian, head of financial services at search firm Robert Walters, said: 'High risk leads to high returns: If bankers and traders are raking in millions in bonuses, it is a clear sign that the bank is taking risky positions. Hence the risk-reward culture of remuneration will now be under much scrutiny.'
Even business graduates are jittery.
Mr Nick Soriano, deputy director of marketing and admissions in Nanyang Business School's Master of Business Administration (MBA) programme, said some students, especially those who were in the finance industry prior to entering the MBA programme, are now rethinking their careers.
Economists believe this is indeed the dawning of a new age of austerity. Citigroup economist Kit Wei Zheng said: 'At the very minimum, we can expect that the US consumer will cut down on his spending for at least a year. He's been living well beyond his means and that will have to come to an end.
'In Singapore, expect to see much slower consumption growth. To the extent that we'll see a recession of an unknown duration, a recovery by the end of next year is by no means guaranteed.'
Yet, there are some who believe history will always repeat itself.
Mr Daniel Long, 38, a private equity fund manager in Singapore, said: 'Things move in cycles. It's just the way the economy functions. When people are excited by a boom, they start getting aggressive. I'm sure in a few years from now, you'll see the same excesses again.'
Commodities investor Jim Rogers, 65, agreed: 'Right now, they've learnt their lesson. But in 20 years, there'll be a new generation of bankers who won't remember this and they'll do something just as bad.'
Want to restore sobriety to the financial sector? Then get back to the basics, say the experts.
That means returning to the fundamentals of prudent lending and borrowing, where the lender and borrower maintain some kind of personal responsibility for, and personal interest in, whether the person receiving the money can actually pay it back.
Mr Rogers, who lives in Singapore, added: 'If you ask me, governments are the immoral ones right now, taking assets from the people who worked hard and did a good job, and giving them to the people who were incompetent and perhaps dishonest.
'Old ladies in the Midwestern US...now have to pay higher taxes to finance...Wall Street's Maseratis. That's horribly immoral - and bad economics.' [email protected]
