Banking 4 Beginners

As many of my readers already know, I spent ten years in the banking industry and another seven years as a consultant to bankers. Admitting this is almost akin to saying you were a thief and a liar but not every banker is to blame for the mess we are in today. Anyway, I mention my association with banking for a reason. One aspect of my previous job was to help educate our banking clients. I spent a lot of time designing classes and writing what amounted to text books on banking. Over the years I gave numerous lectures on the industry ranging from very technical seminars with bank CFO’s to teaching the basics of banking to newly hired bank employees. I discovered that I had a knack in making the incomprehensible understandable. In fact, most of these classes and textbooks are still being taught today.

Truth be told, I miss writing the classes and giving the lectures. I also think there is a greater need than ever to explain to nonbankers just what is going on and why it is happening. So I would like to try to fill in this gap. I want to spend time delving into the history of banking and how we got into this mess. I lived through a lot of the changes that are impacting us today and can discuss some of this first hand.

I strongly feel that people need to understand the hows and whys of the bank failures, mortgage crisis and stock market declines. But the business analysts on TV are talking to each other and rarely explain what is happening in terms that the average person could understand. Plus the situation today is very complex and no one has the time or space to cover more than just the highlights. So there is a definite need to educate people. Therefore I am going to try to remedy this since I now have the time and genuinely enjoy discussing the banking industry and explaining difficult concepts so that anyone can understand them.

In the past I have already written a few blogs on banking. But I realized that PC Fugitive isn’t the right platform for what I want to do. So I have created a new blog: Banking 4 Beginners. There is a link to this on the right. I am using a new feature which not only shows the name of the blog but also the name and date of the last posting. This way you can see at a glance if a new article has been added in either my new blog or in Lorena Mae. However, unlike my original blogs, Banking 4 Beginners won't be updated a couple of times a week as many of the articles will require research which will take time. My goal with Banking 4 Beginners is not quantity but quality and to be informative without sounding too professorial or boring. So to try to achieve these goals will take a lot more time than my current blogs.

I also know that Banking 4 Beginners is not for everyone. That’s ok. I know this can be a very dry subject. The blogs might be long and I doubt if there will be pictures. And even though I will try to present information in an entertaining way it still won’t ever be that exciting. But life today is certainly “exciting” in a very scary way all due to banking, mortgages and economic problems. Yet most of the population doesn’t understand any of it. So if I could help to educate even a handful of people then my new Banking 4 Beginners blog will have served a purpose.