Monthly Archives: October 2008

While people in the capital markets or selling to it lament the “It’ll never be the same” nature of recent events, there is an emerging meme that says that this is perhaps a good thing.

Fareed Zakaria in a recent column in the Newsweek titled There is a Silver Lining:

Wall Street will also need to change. Paul Volcker has long argued that the recent spate of financial innovation was nothing of the kind: it simply shuffled around existing resources while contributing few real benefits to the economy. Such activity will now be reduced significantly.

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Even among economists and finance gurus, there is disagreement about the financial rescue package that the US Congress approved last week. A very well argued viewpoint, which does not agree with the Treasury’s plan, is here. But the one thing everyone agrees upon is that Wall Street is going to change forever.

While legislators and companies look at what this means for the economy and for their businesses, most people, particularly students who are looking at a career in Finance, wonder about what this means for them. What follows in this post applies more to developed markets like the US and Western Europe. In developing markets like India, the same trends will manifest but I expect that the effect of the underlying economic growth on the financial sector can more than compensate for it.

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