It's all about the financial crisis, not just here in New York, but everywhere. I was in LA last weekend and it, rather than Britney Spears or David Beckham, was the hot topic.

When LA drops its gilded facade, I worry. When people who were paid five digit sign-on bonuses last year get the boot because of their employer's fiscal instability, I worry some more. Job security has less to do with individual performance than I've ever seen before.

Because I live just outside of Manhattan, I'm watching my neighbors and friends lose ,or live in fear of losing, their jobs. The same is true for friends and family members of folks I've placed over the years. And while I can't help (or even talk to) everyone who needs advice, that doesn't mean I'm without opinions or ideas; so I wrote an article, Wall Street Dead End, for the New York Post; it ran as the cover to the @Work section on Monday.

On another note, EMC got some Wall Street-related coverage on the same day my story ran ; RSA chief Art Coviello was mentioned in eWeek, Wall Street's 'Colossal' Risk Management Failure was the headline.

EMC lost about 10 percent of its $23.5 billion market capitalization on that day (Sept. 29). Ouch!

I was impressed by some of Coviello's comments; namely with those about business risk. The below is pasted in directly from eWeek.

""It's as if the regulatory authorities and businesses themselves have not recognized the speed at which business is done today," Coviello said. "The ability to do these complex financial instruments requires literally a Ph.D. in applied mathematics to understand some of these things that are being treated by 25- and 35-year-olds without the profile of risk behind it.

"So you've got speed conspiring with complexity to create more risk, and there's nobody evaluating the risk!"

There's nothing wrong with the breakneck speed at which business operates, because it does lead to greater productivity, Coviello said.

"But people need to understand that the risk is higher, and you need to start with business risk. Quickly that will devolve to IT risk, because so much of business today is run on your IT environment," he said. "If ever there was a time when the kind of work that we're doing [was important], to raise the profile of risk mitigation and risk-rewarding equation, it's absolutely right now."

Right you go, Art. I won't argue about the need to keep information safe from would-be EXTERNAL predators. But what about the brilliant minds INSIDE who fail to recognize (or simply don't care) about the possible negative consequences of their actions? Can the right data be applied to the right equations and business rules to generate reports that both individuals and institutions must sign-off on before they take action? Can regulatory filters and alarms be installed? Can what keeps us safe keep us from acting greedy?

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