April 2018 - Jan's notebook

The best compliment on ‘Bankers are people, too’

The Dutch translation of ‘Bankers are people, too’ was released last week. A guest remarked that he liked the unconventional order of the topics. The fact that I wasn’t formally trained as an economist undoubtedly helped. Because I didn’t start from a mental template of how a book on banking should look like, I had to figure out the best way to present my ideas in a coherent way.

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Question for readers who did study economics at university: did your textbooks discuss central banks and macroeconomics before explaining commercial banking? What would you change to the curriculum? Let me know in the comments!

Hoe bankiers geld scheppen

Mijn boek werd gisteren voorgesteld in het Hilton hotel in Brussel. Voor de Nederlandse editie heb ik een nieuwe titel gekozen: Hoe bankiers geld scheppen. De vertaling van Bankers are people, too kreeg ook een andere kaft (in kleur 🙂 ).

Je kan Hoe bankiers geld scheppen bestellen met deze knop

Continue reading “Hoe bankiers geld scheppen”

The original introduction of ‘Bankers are people, too’

Writing a book involves a lot of deleting, shifting, and rewriting. The recent IT problems at Argenta bank reminded me of the original introduction of Bankers are people, too.

The introduction in the published version of my book is based on the old intro, plus pieces that were originally at the end of Part III. The editor convinced me to integrate them into the beginning.

So without further ado, here is the old intro: Continue reading “The original introduction of ‘Bankers are people, too’”

How I became an economist

I frowned the first time somebody introduced me as an ‘economist’. After all, I don’t have a piece of paper that says I’m an economist. But upon reflection I realized that it was true. In effect, I had indeed become an economist. How did that happen? Continue reading “How I became an economist”