Naked Capitalism points to a summary of the report by Reuters here, but you can go straight to the original text, albeit after jumping through some registration hoops, here. And it's worth it, because there are plenty more gems to be mined.
For example, the authors of the report also conclude that the overriding emphasis, on the part of all players in financial markets, on maximizing short term results, might not serve everyone's long term interests.
In plain English, it is not clear that existing compensation mechanisms effectively ensure that traders take into account the long-term interests of the bank for which they work -- i.e. its survival....
This leads to a second, somewhat disquieting, reason: in the financial industry, in contrast with other businesses, there is a point beyond which increased competition is not stability-enhancing, but rather potentially destabilizing. Heightened competition is beneficial in terms of providing a better service and eliminating poor performers in the industry; however, past a certain point -- difficult to identify -- more competition means more, and perhaps socially undesirable, risk-taking.
This is almost like saying that capitalism, as it is currently constructed, doesn't work.
At some point competition jumps the shark and makes people do stupid things that bad for the group in order to survive. I thought this was explained to everyone in A Beautiful Mind. Anyway that was from a Salon blog post here about a report released by Moodys a credit rating agency
Speaking of competition I dont know who it was but someone was checking out Connections on DVD at the library. Since its now break time I am left as the only technology histroy nerd on campus. Series 1 of the show is older than me, I don't know what season ( Element of {1,2,3} ) I used to watch on TLC when it was THE LEARNING CHANNEL. Clinton and Stacey need to be fired and replaced by academics in cable knit sweaters once more.
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