It’s Time For a Flight from Safety says the Wall Street Journal in an article titled Those Safe Havens You’ve Been Flocking to Aren’t So Safe. The title alone suggests it is worth the time to read the article and contemplate how to apply some pearls of wisdom in your personal and business life.

When such a bedrock fiscally conservative business oriented publication writes an article expounding such a position, what facts would warrant such a statement?  Well consider the traditional business metric of balancing risk and reward.  Returns relative to risk in safe harbors like the Swiss Franc, Treasuries and gold may not justify the premiums demanded as an avalanche of money has flowed in.

Who would have thought you would be seeing the AAA credits banks charging business customers to keep cash at their bank? If you are like me that alone made you slow down as you read this article.  Traditionally banks pay customers for deposits used to loan out to other customers at juicy profitable margins.  That business model changes in two ways in the new turbulent roller coaster world. First, financial institutions say they are not seeing enough highly profitable credit worthy corporations asking for loans to need this new tidal wave of business entities seeking safety by depositing and holding substantiually largetr balances of cash.  Second, the Federal Reserve and regulators charge banks for the balances held . So the new tsunami condition can be boiled down to higher costs and lower sales destroying the banks net income and gross margins.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904009304576530802327053490.html

Now apply this in your life and business to find an opportunity to exploit or risk to avoid using the insight you gain from asking:

Where should you rebalance your risk taking?

Which of your customers will be seeing changes in their profitability that will change their relationship with you?

What other Million Dollar Blind Spot will you find with an updated enterprise risk management type review?