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Near-Term Changes in Finance

- Even if an equivalent of Glass-Steagall was put in place, little would change, since the money would simply move to hedge funds and private equity firms. A driver for many of the changes was an increasing unequal society, and there is little chance of it becoming more equitable any times soon.

- I assumed that Obama's policies would be 'Better-Same' than Republicans, meaning generally better for people, but with the same entrenched interests. His presidency will not change very much in the US political landscape, and the same corporate interests will be served, for the most part unabated, including finance.

- Being in banking technology, the only significant changes in banking I've seen, and these are not transformative, are algorithmic trading and an intensification of risk systems. One of the big change drivers in banking/finance is technology, such that more and more activities are handled electronically and by technology.

- The middle office, notably a morass of failed trades that need to be settled, and there are large numbers of them, is being moved offsite and overseas, as well as automated. As previously mentioned, the CTB/RTB division had as a component Six Sigma, looking for ways to prevent failed trades, largely by designing better systems. An obvious change likely to occur is the outsourcing of more jobs to Asia, and not just India, as well as to locations within the US, outside of New York.

- Geitner is from the same entrenched groups, and will possibly go to Goldman's after his tenure, and there is talk of him leaving soon.

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