A report on the international bankers:

[shanen]

I actually had some rather interesting dealings with the local banks yesterday. Most of my euros are in one of the largest ones. I'm often greeted by the assistant manager when I visit, and she sometimes handles my business personally. Probably because she's one of the most fluent speakers of English in the branch (which isn't really saying much), and my handling of the local language tends to be painful to hear.

Well, yesterday I wanted to ask her if there was any appropriate 'response' to the current financial situation, and she suddenly couldn't say anything. No capish, no capish. I was pretty offended. She knows full well that I'm not really comfortable with the economic situation, but she sure as heck wasn't going to say anything that could possibly be interpreted by any stretch of the imagination as advice. My best guess is that the bank has warned the employees not to say anything that the customers can blame the bank for--as though they are expecting a shower of blame to develop into a typhoon. My main impression was that they are running seriously scared, even though she didn't say a single word directly to that effect.

Being rather offended, I made a maximum one-day withdrawal (which isn't very large under the latest legitimate-customer-harassing regulations) and took it to a different bank that I've been considering for a while. I only dealt with low-level flunkies at that bank, and they did seem quite eager to get my business--but it was still a pain in the arse to deal with the usual legitimate-customer-harassing regulations. I very nearly gave up before getting the account open, but I finally went ahead with it... The decisive factor was that I spoke to two employees who used more English in one afternoon than I'd heard in a couple of years from the big bank.

I think the most annoying part at the new bank was that they claim to offer investment advice, but not really. Specific case in point is that I want to get more money out of the local currency, but they could make no recommendations about any of the alternative currencies that they can handle. In particular, I feel the euro is priced about as high as it will go (but I might well be mistaken), so I was interested in some alternative. I'm still convinced that the Chinese yuan is substantially undervalued--but I still can't buy it--at least not directly. However, it seems likely that the Hong Kong dollar or the Singapore dollar might be linked to the Chinese currency and might therefore benefit when the Chinese currency is finally repriced. However they couldn't answer any questions about any relationships among those currencies, not even as to which one is more closely linked to the yuan.

[A HERETIC I AM]

1. Perhaps all of that is because they were acting as they should....as bankers...

and not as brokers or advisors.

[cliss]

2. Don't expect much from your banker.

Bankers are really restricted from saying anything nowadays, because the situation is really fragile and volatile.
I'm not sure if anyone really knows how bad it really is.
Also, she might be jeopardizing her position if she divulged too much.

My advice is to stay on top of things: using alternate sources. Places like the DU, Daily Kos
www.dailykos.com
There are a lot of savvy people (including bankers) who can log in anonymously, and tell it like it is.

Welcome to the DU, by the way Shanen.
Great post, and good luck with your portfolio:smoke:

[shanen]

3. The silence of the bankers

Comparing bankers to lambs?

I don't feel like that defense is persuasive in either of these cases. As regards the assistant manager at the large bank, she has made some efforts to be helpful and even 'friendly' in the past, though it might be partly related to wanting to practice her English a bit. She has certainly been willing to offer confirming assessments that are related to my assessments of the situation--but not last Friday.

For the smaller bank, this is one of the new 'full-service' banks that explicitly advertises that they will provide investment advice. While it is true that the two employees I spoke to were not really in that part of the business, they still should have known some of the basic background information as the point spread between the high and low exchange rates, or they should have referred me more directly to the section that provides the investment advice. However, I can't really assess their apparent nervousness, since I haven't had any prior dealings with them, whereas I've been doing business with the that assistant manager for some years, and I'm sure her attitude was distinctly spooked.

As regards the welcome, I've actually been around for a couple of years, but just reading the weekly top 10. I confess that my motivation for posting is that I tried to do something the other day that said I needed to have more posts. I find this style of system less comfortable to work with, but I've been bringing over some of my comments from other fora where I'm a more active participant. The reputation of this system has been... How should I put it? Sometimes questioned?