Can Cryptocurrencies Really Pose Risks to Financial Stability?
As the leaves in New York’s Central Park started to turn an auburn shade, in a small, but well appointed office in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, James Finley had anything but the changing seasons on his mind.
Taking off his thick-rimmed glasses, the 54-year-old Finley chewed on the end of one of them, a habit he had whenever he was faced with particularly challenging accounting issues.
A chartered accountant, Finley, who grew up in a middle class family from the Bronx had worked hard, earning a full scholarship to Columbia’s Business School where he graduated with top honors.
Many of Finley’s clients were wealthy banking and finance-types (and their divorcees) and many of them found the location of his office in New York’s ritzy Upper East Side, a convenient limo ride away.
But in the dying days of summer in 2008, Finley was more concerned about the portfolio of many of his client’s securities and how they were being valued than he was about his client’s commute to his office.
Because many of Finley’s clients were “accredited investors” (investors who have specified levels of income and/or assets) they had access to some of the most lucrative, but also difficult to value investments that Wall Street had to offer.
