Tuesday, October 28, 2008

A crisis of biblical proportions!

One group of people who should do very well as a result of the current financial crisis are people who write finance textbooks.

While there's been no shortage of new books/blogs/news stories, attempting to explain the ubiquitous "credit crunch" in plain English, entire courses at universities around the world will need to be re-written.

Of course, that's assuming there will still be a demand for studying courses in finance. After all, what incentive do you currently have for studying a course with no career opportunities for the next year at least? Answer: not much.

But finance is more than just a course at university, as we are discovering each day. It actually matters to the lives of everyone.

Some of the people who graduated with a PhD in financial engineering decided to apply their skills in mathematics and computing to come up with a "new and innovative" ways to invest in financial markets. The result was a something like the vision that Joseph had of Egypt: seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine.

Perhaps clinging to religion might not seem like such a bad idea after all...