A bit later I was confidently saying: "Our exposure to the CDO [collateralised debt obligations] business is very low; we have a very stringent risk policy."

 

Then later: "We have taken sufficient write-downs already last quarter and we won't be further affected by the breakdown of the housing and finance market."

Soon after: "Although the market seems to have taken an unusually bad downturn, our balance sheet is very strong and we should be insulated from the impact."

Followed by: "We have substantial assets on our books that are very difficult to value right now and so we might be looking at worse results this quarter, but our liquidity position is very strong."

Then: "While we are scaling back our operations quite significantly, we have substantial access to cash and credit lines so that we can continue to carry on our business."

And eventually, the inevitable: "Yes, we did receive a substantial government bailout, but we did that to strengthen our already strong position." Now I don't even bother with this. I just tell my clients: "Yep, we're stuffed."

It's a lot easier this way. I can relax and give up trying to come up with excuses for why, if things are so good, we aren't interested in lending any money to anybody.

On the other hand, by demonstrating myself to be consistently clueless as to my bank's financial situation, I have pretty much destroyed any credibility I have with anyone I have spoken to over the last six months. This is frustrating, but it's really not my fault. Well, not entirely my fault.

You see, all the nonsense I have been spouting about the bank's response to the financial crisis comes directly from my own management. We have all been getting regular management updates and sample Q&As in our inboxes intended for us to use for exactly this purpose. My naive mistake all this time was thinking that these had any value.

I don't mean to suggest that the management has been deliberately deceiving me. No, the problem, as I now realise, is that between me and the management is something called the corporate communications department.

The job of the corporate communications department, as it sees it at least, is to put a "spin" on everything that the management says. So when the chief executive wants to inform the staff that he is going to have to lay off a load of people, the communications people rewrite his announcement to say, not that we will be firing people, not even that we will be downsizing. No, they use the term "right-sizing", thus ensuring that nobody knows what the CEO is talking about.

Similarly, it has become quite common to hear financial company spokesmen, guided by their communications teams, saying things like: "Our underlying business remains strong, but market conditions have adversely affected certain operations."

Before communications people got to it, that would have read: "Those parts of our business that are still making money are doing fine, but there's a whole bunch of other parts that have had it."

The most common next sentence - "Unfortunately those market conditions have resulted in substantial write-downs of asset values and substantial losses this quarter" - of course means that the rubbish parts of our business far outweigh the good parts.

Communications people have become so powerful that no one says anything at all any more without their involvement. And that has been my problem all along.

The management wasn't allowed to say: "Look, we really have no idea what is going to happen, so be careful what you say to your clients." Instead, it has to find something positive to say no matter what is going on. So it tells us it is "currently taking steps to address the changes in business conditions" and that it is "confident that we will manage through this time in a prudent and appropriate manner". Sounds great; means nothing.

So that's the way I am approaching my own financial situation. I am happily telling my wife that I am very confident that I will still be appropriately compensated and that my employment situation will continue to reflect the current market conditions. Oh yes, and that my stock portfolio is well poised to benefit from future upside opportunities. Mostly true, generally meaningless, and completely depressing.