10 great levelers of finance

This post is going to be introducing the reader to the "10 great levelers of finance" that I think will transform (democratize) the global financial landscape in ways that many could not possibly envision today. I will just briefly introduce each great leveler and there will be 10 seperate posts that discuss each of the great levelers.

1 Micro Finance
  No doubt micro lending has started to create an impact in the third world and with the credit crisis
  even in first world countries we are seeing the revival of credit unions but the micro-finance
  revolution I foresee is a different one.

2 Venture Capital
  Another area which has played a pivotal role in bankrolling a lot of the tremendous paradigm
  breakthroughs in the modern world may see itself reincarnate into a totally new avatar.

3 Subprime Lending
  Do not be stunned by the notion that a toxic system such as this could possibly be a change driver.

4 Risk Optimization
 The term "risk management" is going to be in the dustbin of history in the near future because the convergence of international banking and insurance practices are going to make "risk optimization" the new buzzword but what exactly is that going to be.

5 Tax Rationalization
 One of the important facets of the recent crisis and is probably the most ignored aspects of global financial imbalance is the clinal variation in taxation between sovereign states. Of course the establishment of regional economic blocs like the EU is a preview of future global tax rationalization.

6 International Accounting Standards
Well this could be called the big brother or mother to the tax system as it depends heavily on the accounting or financial reporting system which is also undergoing a global convergence.

7 Derivative Explosion
North America and gradually the rest of the fairly developed or developing world are at the threshold of web based trading explosion particularly derivatives and forex which I think is going to hurt investment banks business models over the next few years as more and more people equip themselves with the neccesary tools to become their own traders and money managers.

8 The Google Finance Grid
The creation of wealth through the "Google" and "YouTube" model is going to challenge big retail to such an extent that vast amounts of commercial real estate is going to disappear or the urban landscape will have to become more "casual" with the line between home, work, shopping and leisure become more blurred than ever before.

9 The end of bubble finance
Central bankers should have enough sense after so many speculative financial bubbles (real estate, dot com, subprime) to realize the model of economic growth that spurs a giant consumption binge until the economic system passes out due to overdose and starts vomiting and has a terrible hangover for a long time is not healthy for the long term sustainability of humanity on the planet. So how would economic systems of the future behave

10 Currency Rationalization
The global money markets today seem to rely on the greenback and gradually also the euro for international trade. However another quiet revolution is taking place in the developing world where cross currency trade not involving the dollar is taking place at a record rate especially since countries with relatively close economic and political links are starting to lose faith in Uncle Sam's long term stability and would rather trust each other. However currency rationalization is something countries could be doing to make many more currencies internationally liquid the way the greenback or euro is today.

intro

After a tumultuous month at my workplace and being caught in a downsizing frenzy I finally had a sort of wake-up call to really start the one thing that many people are already doing on the web : Blogging. This may be a very familiar situation for many many people worldwide particularly in the wake of the recent global financial and economic crisis. Like most of you out there I have just joined the blogging cum income generation bandwagon which is getting more crowded by the day and hopefully start writing quality content that could generate income possibly to the point that I do not lay much emphasis on my "professional career growth" which means a heck of a lot of money.



So what am I going to talk about in this entry....hmmm!!! Well I belong to the white-collar class and am supposed to be in a profession of high regard (the problem is most people have never even heard of it before to have some opinion of it). In fact my professional body's monthly magazine proclaims that the knowledge, skills and judgement that members of my profession have acquired through professional education and their work is highly applicable in the area of managing risk. There has even been talk of highly experienced members of my profession being sought after by investment banks and other large financial institutions who were morally responsible for the credit crisis.



So what profession do I belong to.....most people have never even heard of it before and many people in financial institutions don't have a clue what we actually do (Sadly in the past the name of the profession was associated with a major financial disaster that occured in the UK in the late nineties). So what profession do I belong to.....I did a little referencing on the etymology of the word and I was extremely disappointed because it thoroughly misrepresents what we do. The oldest trace of the word was in 1553 and its Latin transliteration meant 'registrar, clerk, copyist, account keeper and was in 1849 formally adopted by the industry in which members of my profession mainly work in.



So has anyone guessed yet what profession I belong to? I'll leave it to you to figure it out but after finding out the ancient meaning of the word I have mixed feelings about the appropriateness of the name. It is understandable that nearly 80% of the technical knowledge that members of my profession need to know today did not even exist in 1849 when the name was formally adopted. The fact that no one has ever thought of modernizing the name and possibly coming up with contemporary technically-savvy designations (kind of like in the IT world or even the medical professions myriad of Latin tongue twisting specializations) is somewhat disappointing but will eventually happen as the rapidly changing information technology and knowledge landscape will force it to do so.

As I wind up this intro I have just begun to realize that the content that I will be putting on would be stuff that's specific to the profession that I work in but in a simplified non technical way and also analysis of other phenomena that relate to the rapidly changing ecology of finance and economics in the same way information technology is accelerating our material evolution.