How to produce well-rounded financial experts
By Nury Vittachi
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Easterners to the rescue! Over the next five years, Asia will take over as financial leader of the world, a committee of representatives from the region announced last night.
"But we are not going to make the same mistakes that Wall Street made," a spokesman added. "Instead, we are going to produce a generation of characteristically Asian money-handlers: they will be well-rounded and holistic, with bad haircuts and 1980s eyewear."
A key aspect of the scheme is to encourage Asian women to follow a career in banking.
"This proves two things," said the spokesman. "First, Asian men are not sexist, and second, we are chivalrous, as the women will be given only the simplest tasks, so as not to overtax their small brains."
To achieve this new paradigm, Asian headhunters have been ordered to hire financial staff of both sexes from ALL departments of Asian universities, including arts and humanities.
Critics from the banking sector blasted the scheme as unrealistic. The dean of a top business school, who did not wish to be named, said: "No offence intended, but everyone knows that arts and humanities students are utterly clueless morons."
A spokesman for the Asian Arts and Humanities Association angrily retorted: "Oh, yes we are."
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To ensure a basic degree of numeracy, candidates in the first round of interviews were asked to respond to a straightforward mathematical equation. The question was: "What is two times two?"
The responses were as follows:
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Music Student: "A polka."
Architecture Student: "A pair of duplex semis."
Religion Student: "Marrying the same person after reincarnation."
Engineering Student: "Metric or imperial?"
Drama Student: "Two twos? Or not two twos? That is the question."
Sociology Student: "The answer is: Not enough to live on, unless we augment the numbers with government grants."
Languages Student: "C'est deux. Es ist zwei. Se trata de dos. Het is twee."
Food Tech Student: "Twelve hundred calories, or a pair of cheeseburgers."
Law Student: "Before I answer that question, I will need you to sign this form indicating that I am not liable for any losses resulting from answers I give."
Economics student: "Assuming compound interest, 4.025."
Philosophy Student: "It depends on whether the numbers exist, or indeed, whether the questioner exists, and on what proofs we can get on either question."
Computer Studies Student: "That’s easy, it’s 01010101."
Mathematics Student: "Are we talking positive or negative integers? In a binary universe or base-4?"
Buddhism Student: "A tree."
Physics Student: "Does the word 'time' in your question refer to the time-space continuum or Einsteinian fourth dimensional time?"
English Student: "A pair of rhyming couplets or a quatrain."
Biology Student: "In terms of asexual bacterial conjugation, the answer would be between four and five billion within 24 hours."
Dance Studies Student: "The answer is a glissade step followed by a quarter-spin, repeat and bow to your partner."
Stockbroking student: "Depends on the margin."
Chemistry Student: "Since two molecules of CO2 are generated for each acetyl CoA molecule introduced into the citric acid cycle, the answer is a pair of acetyle CoA molecules."
Financial Analysis student: "A massive loss."
Digital Media Student: "I have no idea what the answer is, but give me a week and I can make a 3D image of the question spin round at funny angles."
