Paul Krugman posted an interesting piece in the NYT today, in which he ruminated on the testimony offered before congress by some of the leading banking executives, and concluded the following:

Do the bankers really not understand what happened, or are they just talking their self-interest? No matter. As I said, the important thing looking forward is to stop listening to financiers about financial reform.

I definitely agree that bankers (or anybody for that matter) shouldn’t be allowed to write their own rules. We shouldn’t regard people as benevolent geniuses just because we find it difficult to understand them. Krugman’s point reminds me of some of my own musings on the topic (for example, see “Money Can’t Buy You Trust: What We Won’t Be Getting for $1 Trillion“). In short, there’s no such thing as blind trust.

This week, I started a new job as Sr. Manager at Accenture. I’ll be working in Accenture’s Security Consulting Practice, focusing on Identity and Access Management. So my new role is basically a continuation of my career for the last dozen years, but at Accenture it’s also an opportunity to get involved in some of the most challenging and culturally relevant identity projects of our time.

Governments continue to develop identity systems, commercial sites increasingly add social networking features, and new cloud services strain existing modes of online trust. I’m looking forward to a very interesting year!