This ratio is above the average of the past five years, probably because of a decline in corporate profits as well as an increase in corporate debt. Banks continue to be managed well. The average efficiency ratio improved in the past year, as did the return on equity and assets.
This syndrome of too much of arcane rocket science and financial alchemy in the financial sector, almost entirely for its own sake to almost complete exclusion of the needs of the real sector, created a massive “financial sector – real sector imbalance” which, being, intrinsically unsustainable, culminated eventually into the now-all-too-familiar apocalyptic denouement. 3.