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Bank management and financial services
This book, now in its ninth edition, reaches all the way back to the beginning of the 1990s. So much has happened in this interval of more than 20 years. War and revolution have marked many parts of the globe, especially the Middle East, with no end on the hori¬zon. Natural disasters from earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and tsunamis, volcanoes, and more have unleashed devastation and death in critical regions of our planet.
Economic prosperity that marked so much of the 1990s turned into economic disas¬ter in the opening decade of the new century. Jobs disappeared, living standards plum¬meted, homes were lost, and countless businesses failed. The worst economic recession in nearly 80 years led to anger and demonstrations in the streets and the most stringent belt-tightening among families and business owners and managers that has been experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Unquestionably, it is difficult to find and maintain a positive attitude and that most precious commodity, hope, under these circumstances. Yet that is what this book and many others like it are all about—how to turn trouble and turmoil into useful knowledge and from that knowledge hope that our world can be a happier and more fulfilling place.
This book does not presume to tackle the broadest spectrum of knowledge. No book can really do that, even in the modern digital age. Instead it focuses on a much smaller but nevertheless important slice of our world—the financial-services sector served by thousands of small and large financial firms that develop and market tools to manage risk, pursue financial opportunities, and supply information vital to the making of informed financial decisions, accompanied by the hope of favorable outcomes. Much of this book is devoted to the banking sector, but also to other important financial institutions—credit unions, mutual and hedge funds, pension plans, insurance companies, finance companies, security brokers and dealers, and thousands of other financial-service providers. We explore what these institutions do for us and the risks they present.
The heart of this edition, like those editions that have preceded it, is risk management. Managing risk has emerged into the dominant topic that most managers of financial-service firms must deal with in the modern world. Indeed, the taking on of significant risk marks the financial-services sector as much as any other sector of the economy. It is the fundamental task of banks and other financial firms to identify risk in its many forms and then develop and offer tools that are able to control that risk. Few activities are more important to us because the financial sector is, and always has been, continuously threat¬ened by significant risks at home and abroad as well as inside and outside the individual financial firm. No better example can be found than the great credit crisis of 2007-2009 where large numbers of financial-service providers floundered and failed alongside others who somehow managed to survive.
Often today we distinguish between external and internal risks. For example, external risks to financial firms include wars, crime, poverty, environmental destruction, global warming, political revolution and strife, falling currency values, volatile equity markets, weakening economies, declining sales in key industries, inflation, increasing energy short¬ages, and a troubled home mortgage market. All of these external risks have had (and will continue to have) a profound effect on the services financial firms can offer and the profits and future growth they may hope for. Moreover, many financial-service provid¬ers today are caught in the middle of a geopolitical struggle as important countries like
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