Mr. Thomas A. Myers gave a lecture on a socially responsible global financial system at 9 A.M. on July 31st in UIBE. His short biography is attached at the end of this report.

 

 In this speech, Mr. Myers first expressed his wishes for a closer relationship between China and America. A friendship between China and America, he said, is a win-win situation, and this should be the concern not only of the leaders, but also of the average citizens in both countries. It is a matter that should be tackled by teenagers, the owners of the future world. It should be a Chinese dream, an American dream, and the world’s dream to be interlinked with each other and have similar essences.. With an increasinginfluence, China has become the creditor of many countries including the United States. Myers hopes that China can undertake the responsibility as a big power, since it impacts the rest of the world, not just Asia.

 

Then Mr. Myers spoke about "What is broken and how to fix it” through some recent international financial instances, such as, Enron bankruptcy, the subprime crisis, and the European debt crisis, exposing the existing problems in the world financial system.

He first told how J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Enron performed financial fraud through a trading method called "advanced payment". Mr. Myers illustrated using graphs how they used prepayments to make big fortunes.

 

Next, he explained that the fundamental cause of the subprime crisis was due to poor supervision. Given examples included the Greek debt crisis and the European debt crisis. In addition, chairmen of the European central bank and the federal reserve system both had a commercial and investment banking background. This conflict of interests, same as "fox see chicken", was another main cause of the crisis. Finally, Myers, using his own experience as a means of judgment, declared that in order to build a socially responsible global financial system, we need to strengthen the regulation and plan ahead.

 

The lecture contained a great deal of professionalterms, which were a little difficult to understand. However, everyone listened carefully and there were still many students who put forward their own questions from time to time. Everyone considerably benefitted from the lecture, especially me, who’s major is finance. 

 

My financial teacher at my university taught me that people involved in finance have heavy responsibilities. Coinciding with the wise words of Mr. Myers, my professor stated that the most important life-long principleto adhere to is that of integrity. Relatedly, Mr. Myers exclaimed that the purpose of money is to be "for the welfare of most of the people" in order to "let all people have the right to pursue happiness".

 

In my opinion, try your best to use knowledge to benefit most people- this is the duty of everyone in the financial area. The world financial system currently has a lot of problems, such as the shadow banking organizations which have too many stakeholders to be regulated. During the global financial crisis in 2008, while many people from middle-class went bankrupt, Wall Street fund managers continued to receive high salaries and bonuses. Lack of supervision of financial derivatives caused the worldwide disaster. Faced with such complex and serious problems, individual strength is not enough, but as long as we work together to take responsibility, one day we can build a real global financial system offering service to the entire public.

 

Written by Student Huang Jiashu of UIBE