2009 10
Should US banks be allowed to lie?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in International with No Comments
Americans live in a culture of truth. Spaniards are less inspired by truth itself. This doesn’t mean that no one tells lies in the American business world, clearly not the case, or that the business culture of Spain is based on lies, clearly not the case either. But it means that in relative terms truth for truth sake is above all an American obsession. Lying is seen as a more serious failing in American culture than it is in Spanish culture. The abortion debate is an interesting one. Spain never legalized abortion, “lo descriminalizó” which means it made it illegal but without a penalty, this type of legal structure would not really make it in the States. But as a result in Spain the abortion debate is mostly over and in USA it is an endless, useless debate. But let´s move on to banking.
Why is it that now Banco Santander is still worth 42 billion dollars, and Citigroup, which is much bigger, is only worth 5 billion? Because Banco Santander operates in a culture of lax auditing and Citigroup operates in a culture of mark to market – and the same goes for all American and Spanish banks. Because the Bank of Spain has not asked Botín and his local competitors to price all their financial assets in the marketplace. Because Spain is a club in which it is better to have friends than to tell the truth at all cost, and the truth is that Spanish bank portfolios are not much better off than American bank portfolios but at least so far Spanish banks are the most profitable in the world. And this is happening while the economic crisis is much worse in Spain than it is in the USA with unemployment at over twice the rate of the 8% recorded in the States. Lies create inflated values on the bank assets and so far the value of Spanish banks dwarfs the value of USA banks.