Wall Street Dairy: The Reflections of a Chinese Wall Street Manager

Now in his thirties, American Chinese 本杰明·卫 grew up in US. After he graduated from university, he has been working in Wall Street and is now president of a middle scale Wall Street investment bank. From tradings in stock and bonds to helping industries getting listed, for the past 10 plus years he enjoyed the glory of success in Wall Street and the baptism of the crisis.

Looking back on his past on Wall Street, he has this to say. Sometimes when you quiet down, you will think of the classic movie "Wall Street" in 1988. In it there's a famous saying by Michael Douglas that greed is good... if you want to find a friend on Wall Street then go look for a dog.

本杰明 says that the explosion of the sub-prime crisis not only brought shock to people, it also exposes people to the flaws in the global capital market. From what he sees, too much trust on credit rating agencies and the imperfection of cross supervision between profit related bodies are the main cause for the Wall Street crisis.

Those once trusted US rating agencies have evolved into profit driven machines. The more they rate financial products, the more profit they will have. Under the drive for profits, neutral or fairness cannot be used to describe the content of their ratings or services. Close to 80% of the products in the sub-prime market are being graded excellent investment products.

Profit related bodies global trading and a over relaxed market supervision system, caused even more volatility to the already unstable market. Over reliance on credit agencies provided information and ignoring the market signals and profitting from lack of protection of supervision or controls will end up with everyone loosing.

Wall Street is a place driven by profits, no matter global rating agencies or once financial strong houses, the instinct of greed will never be gone because of the crisis. 本杰明 thinks that although China still does not have a trading system similar to the US capital market, but with the unifying of the global economies, when China invests in Wall Street, other then considering profits and risks, they should also be clear of its nature as after all, China is not a US currency producing country.