Lunchtime Links: Striking fear into the heart of your employees over bad biscuit choice is not good management

It started with a pink wafer; a choice of biscuit so working class it might as well have been a packet of Iced Gems.

Few people would choose the luridly coloured, arid-textured biscuit to accompany a cup of tea, but to serve it to a high powered banker like Fred Goodwin is professional suicide.

Goodwin took immediate action; sending an e-mail titled 'Rogue biscuit' to the catering staff concerned, and threatened to take them through disciplinary procedures. Lesson learned - nothing but Fox's cream biscuits from now on.

This is just one of many ludicrous stories of Fred the Shred's notoriously over-bearing management style, which arguably contributed to RBS's eventual downfall.

Staff at RBS were said to be "terrified of him" and scared to report even small misdemeanours, according to a new book Masters of Nothing: How the crash will happen again unless we understand human nature, which suggests such aggressive management techniques should be consigned to the history books.

"In a boom the bullish are promoted while the cautious are overlooked, reinforcing the cycle. This factor is generally ignored by the beautiful but flawed models of economic analysts," said the book's publisher Biteback.

Is there a future for Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs? (Deal Journal)

Goldman has slashed pay for London bankers (Financial News)

Bank of America response to vicious blogger rumours...again (Financial Times)

"Bank of America could not become another Lehman because even in the worse case scenario it can go to the Federal Reserve and swap assets for cash - something not available before the crisis." (Telegraph)

Analysts rally behind Bank of America (Dealbook)

Citigroup is much safer than Bank of America (Bloomberg)

Citadel has fired the remaining 24 sales and trading staff in its investment bank (Bloomberg)

Barclays make 140 more redundancies in its corporate infrastructure division (Reuters)

Here's how to write a resignation letter just like Steve Jobs. (Guardian)

CDS spreads for a number of European banks are now worryingly high (Telegraph)

Switzerland is no longer a tax haven (Times)

Connecticut has offered UBS $20m to keep its HQ there (Financial News)

Hedge fund Rivercrest Capital has hired two teams and is preparing fund launches (Financial News)