The financial industry is a service industry. It should serve others before it serves itself.
Interpretation
The financial industry should prioritize the needs of its clients over its own profits.
Christine Lagarde emphasizes that the core responsibility of the financial industry is to serve its clients and society at large rather than focusing solely on profit-making. This perspective highlights the importance of ethical practices and customer-centric approaches in a sector that greatly influences the economy and individuals' lives.
In practice
During a financial seminar highlighting ethical practices in banking.
In the 2013 Economists Program, we hired 51 percent women, 49 percent men. And the reason for that is that we have a draft from all over the world, and we've hired, for instance, in that group, a good number of Chinese economists - highly qualified, all Ph.D.s from the best universities of the world. And guess what? They're all women.
Tackling climate change is a collective endeavour, it means collective accountability and it's not too late
I have lived with extraordinary women, whether it was my grandmother, my mother. My father passed away when I was 16... I was witness to a woman who single handedly brought up the entire family and managed to do everything... She was an extraordinary role model for me.
I'm of those who believe that excesses in all matters are not a good idea, whether it's formation of bubbles, whether it's excess in the financial market, whether it's excess of inequality, it has to be watched, it has to be measured, and it has to be anticipated in terms of consequences.
You know, when I sit in meetings and things are very tense and people take things extremely seriously and they invest a lot of their ego, I sometimes think to myself, 'Come on, you know, there's life and there's death and there is love.' And all of that ego business is nonsense compared to that.
Very often as a little girl, then as a young woman, I have suffered my lot of discrimination. I was brought up with brothers; I grew up in a boys' world. You have to elbow your way in. When you come with that sentiment of having been in a minority for a long period of time, then you are much more attentive to minorities.
A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.
Indeed, bull markets are fueled by successive waves of prior skeptics finally capitulating as their fears fade. Eventually, fear turns to euphoria, and that's the stuff of bubbles.
A big part of financial freedom is having your heart and mind free from worry about the what-ifs of life.
A stock certificate is not a tool, like a shovel, or a commodity, like a pound of cheese. What we sell a customer is not a share in a business, but a view of the Elysian Fields. A financier is a creative artist. Our function is to stimulate the imagination. We are poets!
Finance that only talks to itself & deals with each other becomes socially useless
Most women file for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious medical problem, a job loss, or a family break up. It is hard to protect against those.
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