{"id":3619,"date":"2010-01-01T10:56:07","date_gmt":"2010-01-01T10:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3619"},"modified":"2010-01-01T10:56:07","modified_gmt":"2010-01-01T10:56:07","slug":"banking_after_t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3619","title":{"rendered":"Banking after the kindness of strangers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/a23db494-f600-11de-bf49-00144feab49a.html\">Francesco Guerrera<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>\u201dWhoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers\u201d. The last line of Tennessee Williams\u2019 A Streetcar Named Desire \u2013 uttered by its desperate heroine to the doctor taking her to a mental asylum \u2013 is an apt summary of the US financial sector in 2009.<br \/>\n<Br><Br><br \/>\nAs the crisis abated, banks took maximum advantage of the kindness of taxpayers and regulators to return to their core business: making money for shareholders and employees.<br \/>\n<Br><Br><br \/>\nUltra-low interest rates, dwindling competition and pent-up demand for their services sparked a renaissance in profits and share prices of the financial institutions that emerged from the turmoil in reasonable shape.<br \/>\n<Br><Br><br \/>\nThe question is whether history will repeat itself, or even just rhyme, this year. Here are my ten, utterly personal and non-exhaustive, predictions for the year ahead in US finance.<br \/>\n<Br><Br><br \/>\n1) Strangers will be a lot less kind. With banks boasting about their new-found health, regulators will pull the plug on most of the measures they introduced to drag the financial industry back from the brink. A host of acronyms (Tarp, Talf, PPIP, TLGP) will be forgotten but not missed.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/a23db494-f600-11de-bf49-00144feab49a.html\">Francesco Guerrera<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>\u201dWhoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers\u201d. The last line of Tennessee Williams\u2019 A Streetcar Named Desire \u2013 uttered by its desperate heroine to the doctor taking her to a mental asylum \u2013 is an apt summary of the US financial sector in 2009.<br \/>\n<Br><Br><br \/>\nAs the crisis abated, banks took maximum advantage of the kindness of taxpayers and regulators to return to their core business: making money for shareholders and employees.<br \/>\n<Br><Br><br \/>\nUltra-low interest rates, dwindling competition and pent-up demand for their services sparked a renaissance in profits and share prices of the financial institutions that emerged from the turmoil in reasonable shape.<br \/>\n<Br><Br><br \/>\nThe question is whether history will repeat itself, or even just rhyme, this year. Here are my ten, utterly personal and non-exhaustive, predictions for the year ahead in US finance.<br \/>\n<Br><Br><br \/>\n1) Strangers will be a lot less kind. With banks boasting about their new-found health, regulators will pull the plug on most of the measures they introduced to drag the financial industry back from the brink. A host of acronyms (Tarp, Talf, PPIP, TLGP) will be forgotten but not missed.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,21,39,35,44,9,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}