FROM all accounts, head honchos of most banks sit in their ivory towers while playing ducks and drakes with the poor man’s savings. Much as the common folk would wish to observe at close quarters how these super-humans manage to accomplish all the hedging and fudging sitting in their majestic offices, there is little chance of that ever happening. Common with the people of all poor countries, they are destined – much like the men of the Light Brigade of poetry – not to reason why; but to do and die.
How about taking time out to delve into something that directly affects the man in the street, like the banking practices that help the less than scrupulous bankers lead their clients up the garden path? For one thing, it would appear that, like all things connected with banks, the ‘saving’ schemes are designed basically to ensure a net transfer of funds from the nest egg of the small saver to the coffers of the bank. The view of the small fry does not appear to count at all in this equation.
The concept of banking has undergone a sea change over the recent years. Gone are the good old days when a client could bank on his banker. Not any more, much to the delight of you know who! Now it is the banker who not only rules the roost but also considers the account holder and his or her nest egg as fair game. The banker’s objective today is to make sure that the client is stabbed skilfully in the back, taking full advantage of the weapon of small print. No wonder one meets prosperous bankers by the dozen wherever one goes. For one thing, an account can be declared ‘dormant’ at will, which means that the client has an uphill battle at hand merely to reclaim what is veritably his!
Take the matter of the ‘hedge funds” as another example. One would need to delve a bit deeper into this genre of funds. One happened to pick up bits and pieces here and there in an attempt to understand something of the concept of the funds having this somewhat bizarre appellation. The good old dictionary, then, filled in the gaps. The dictionary defines ‘hedging’ as “protecting oneself against loss or error by not committing oneself to a single course of action, opinion etc.”
While on the quest to pin down the concept of hedging, one also came across another of those parallel ideas, i.e. “fudging”. One decided to extend one’s scope of research to cover this one too – if cover is the word one wants. To ‘fudge’, then, is defined as: either ‘to do clumsily or inadequately’ or ‘to misrepresent, falsify or evade’. Now that one looks at the matter closely, ‘hedging’ and/or ‘fudging’ are hardly of recent or indigenous origin. These can safely be classed as age-old arts.
Successful people have invariably put these arts to good use in order to feather their nests. Persons addicted to games of chance ‘hedge’ their bets to cushion the impact of a loss. Courtiers and advisors of powers that be have found it expedient to ‘hedge’ their counsel to ensure that they are not caught on the wrong foot when the time of reckoning comes. And now bankers have joined the fold. The one outstanding difference is that whereas the courtiers and advisors had to depend on their ingenuity, the bankers can always fall back on the small print, against which there is no anti-dote.
Bureaucrats everywhere are, by definition, the master hedgers. It would be a rare bureaucrat, indeed, who would deign to put a candid or even ‘dodgy’ opinion on paper. He would rather be a dodderer than be caught having rendered a definite advice that turns out to be to the disliking of the boss. The name of the game, therefore, is never to commit oneself. In case one is obliged to state one’s opinion, the secret lies in doing so in such a manner as to be either unintelligible or at best ambiguous. In fact, successful bureaucrats are known to skirt around the issue to such an extent that they never quite make it to the point. The banker is ever one up on the bureaucrat, since his shenanigans are always cushioned by the small print and he is not always answerable to his clients. For the hedger, the world of ‘truth’ is his oyster. He can bend the truth in any direction that suits him. His modest objective is to ensure that he is never proved wrong. The possibility that he may not be right as well is, for him, neither here nor there. The art of hedging, then, is basically a negative – not a positive – concept. Not that this affects the actions of the subject in any way whatsoever. All that the hedger is interested in is to cover his tracks. The fact that he is far from the truth is, in so far as he is concerned, of little or no consequence. The hedger is happy so long as he is spared the torture of committing himself one way or the other.
The ‘fudger’, regrettably, goes a step further. Whereas the ‘hedger’ goes to all the trouble merely to avoid having to commit himself one way or the other, the ‘fudger’ is out to deliberately mislead, and that with a nefarious end in mind. The ‘hedger’ may be a nuisance and a pest; the ‘fudger’ is a positive menace. One leaves it to the perspicacious reader to decide what category to conveniently fit in his own banker. One must not end this piece without apologizing to the honest banker. It would not do to dump all bankers into one jolly category. It takes all sorts to make the world go round.
— The writer is a former Ambassador and former Assistant Secretary General of OIC.
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