Clear and present danger

Transparency is a concept that has been bandied about by banks a lot lately, usually when they know the press is watching. But just how transparent are banking practices, and just how clear is the Basel approach to operational risk?

A sage observation of Ralph Waldo Emerson, speaking about a dinner guest, was: “The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.” In other words, let’s spend a few minutes on the intersection of risk and integrity. One of the most overused words of the fiscal crisis is ‘transparency’. The other is ‘sustainability’. Maybe there is a third: ‘moral hazard’. Every big event seems to convert some previously useful terms into jargon. As jargon, with its emotional content, a word