Mr. Mecklai's article is very well written and brings out, without any bravado, his life time of experience in the field.
It is indeed true that trading, of the proprietary variety, is the main-stay as Investment banking does not pay the fancy salaries anymore. The investments in Risk Management over past 10 years have been truly staggering and if honest intent is there (the question mark in risk management!), today's systems can warn or caution you against things that you would have not have thought possible just five years back. But the downside is that trading logic is becoming black-box to traders themselves. How an automobile works can be a black-box to a driver but if it is also a black-box the the automobile engineer, we may have a few things to worry about down the road.
