Finally (!), some excellent insights on risk management culled from the crisis. Not that populist backlash to Wall Street isn’t warranted (except when Congress grandstands), but its lack of practical content depresses me.

Besides, as MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Andrew Lo notes in this quick summary of his risk-management takeaways from the financial crisis, “the very fact that so many smart and experienced corporate leaders were all led astray suggests that the crisis can’t be blamed on the mistakes of a few greedy CEOs.”

Well, then, what is to be blamed? Outdated governance and risk management structures, thank you very much. more

In the U.S., banks typically organize their bills to corporate clients according to American National Standards Institute (ANSI) 822. While the statements still get lengthy, CFOs and treasurers, perhaps aided by software, stand a fighting chance when it comes to figuring out just how much, and for what services, they’re paying their different banking partners.

However, no similar standard exists outside the U.S., says Paul Burstein, formerly managing director for strategic initiatives within GE’s treasury department, and now affiliated with TWIST, or the Transaction Workflow Innovation Standards Team. Lacking such a standard, any attempt to compare one bank’s charges to another’s, or even to analyze single bank statement, becomes an exercise in futility. more

If last week’s (ill-timed) AIG-bonus news and (overheated) Congressional response hasn’t convinced you to take a break from all forms of media, here’s some insight from David Smick on the unintended consequences of last week’s debacle.

Smick says that last week’s chain of events has “(1) created an unprecedented populist uprising across the nation which has made the words “bank bailout” politically radioactive; which (2) is already scaring potential outside investors who might have participated in the Treasury’s upcoming public/private scheme to remove the banks’ toxic assets (investors now fear that if they make a financial killing, they’ll be dragged down to a torture chamber in the basement of the U.S. Capitol building).”

The problem goes several points deeper … more

Too often, I come across (and save) useful content for you, dear readers, that winds up lingering forever on my hard drive because too many other issues, developments, and blog entries push this useful content aside.

To address this challenge, I plan to periodically post a series of links identified succinctly by their subject.

Here’s what I’m reading today to help me make sense of the turbulent world of GRC: more