Evil women bankers caused the financial crisis.

[AnnieLobeseder]

So, apparently, women bankers are responsible for the banking crisis because we didn't Know Our Place and distracted the poor male bankers.

Not sure where to start with this one, it's just awful on so many levels.

But I have to ask - would anyone who isn't a white heterosexual male upset their delicate sensibilities, or just women?

Wasn't April 1 on Sunday?

I love this comment:
"Obviously the solution to this problem is to replace all male bank executives with women, then there should be no more pesky risk-taking caused by the poor boys confused by the presence of female colleagues."

This is a report for the Bundesbank which is the German central bank. I used to work for German bank and visited the HQ fairly often. It was very noticeable how few women there were at senior levels.

It is quite likely that this report focuses mainly on the small German local Landesbanks that had disasterous loan books and heavily influenced by local politics. Local authorities own big shareholdings in them.

The report really is very parochial and very Germany specific. I do not know why they came to the conclusion they did but I suspect these local Landesbanks have a disproportionate number of women on their secondary Boards because of their particular local nature and because they are essentially quite public sector in outlook. It is a spurious causality though to say these women made the crisis worse.

Having worked on trading floors of large investment banks for years I can definitely say more women in positions of real power would have dramatically reduced the scale and impact of the financial crisis.

Lets face it the Boards of all the major banks around the world are dominated by men. Without doubt - men caused the financial crisis and women will disproportionally suffer its impact.

I am hoping that it is an April fool because it's just such a misogynistic article and report (although MoreBeta may have scuppered that theory). Where to begin? How dare these uppity women interrupt the cozy existence of the male boardroom. No wonder the world is in crisis.

Can they make it any more obvious that they hate women?

What a load of misogynistic crap.

There were some women in the vicinity at the time so it must be their fault.

Did the banking crisis start in Germany?

No the financial crisis didn't start in Germany.

However, it did send shock waves through the German Landesbanks which were a lot like our Northern Rock, Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS. Some went bust and some were rescued and some were forced to merge. The close links with regional German politics meant there was a lot of soul searching and a big blame game as to who was responsible.

Naturally, the people in charge want to push the blame away from themselves.

Ft alphaville covered this with a bit more rigour and pointed out that (a) the study didn't control for level of experience and (b) the differences were small anyway. On phone so this link might mess up but will try...

FT

That was more rhetorical than anything else MoreBeta. It's a bit of a joke to claim that women employees in regional German banks caused the world financial meltdown.

But when it comes to fitting up women for their mistakes, men don't have any lines they won't cross.

When banks had to shed staff and cut back after the crisis, guess who was in the firing line?

Women across the board have been affected worse by the recession and crash than men.

Men have used this event as another excuse to attack women in a number of different ways.