In the 1990’s, after the great Finnish banking crisis, the Finnish government had to support the asset management company that handled the banks’ problem assets, in amounts that at one point reached about 10 per cent of GDP. Most of this money was later recovered, but in the meantime taxpayers were furious.
The seeming ability of a number of banking organizations to make consistent profits from foreign exchange trading likely derives not from their insight into future rate changes but from making markets and consistently being able to buy at the bid and sell at the offering price, pocketing the spread.