Maven: HSBC's Rancid Rhetoric

I don't have my hip waders handy so I won't step into the resulting consequences, what with interest rates slightly higher and the housing market more frail by the day. (What was that creak I just heard? More value dropping out of my house.)

But look how the Financial Times sums up in its third-to-last sentence, serving the role of HSBC spokesman. How does this independent media outlet react to those famous last words, made by a very raw and unproven management? Does the FT skewer management or at the very least raise a big, hairy eyebrow so that any investor, reading on a train or at a breakfast table full of unruly children, who might have missed it won't be fooled?

Nope. Wishful thinking.

This is what the FT has to say about HSBC's Eddie Haskell-esque promise that it won't happen again: "It is good news that HSBC's senior management is focusing on running a tighter ship."

Let me turn on a fan to blow away some of the stench. There. Now I'll put these comments in proper perspective and, by extension, put this thin claim in proper perspective for all time. Here's how the last line should read, according to The Business Press Maven: "It is perhaps good news that HSBC's unproven management is at least giving lip service to running a tighter ship."