I'm a Banker - Please Don't Tell Anyone
advertisment
More in @WORK
back-up- City Cartoon: Rako & The Rat - Promotion
- A City on Edge
- Groundhog Day: Love It or Leave It
- If the Lift Had Eyes
- Keeping Up With the Metrosexuals
- From Board Room to Broom Closet
- From Investment Bank to the Wizard's Oz
- Banks, Bonus Tax & Zen
- The City Game of Snakes & Ladders
- Where Are All the City Girls?
Related Content
- The Banker (05/07/2007)
- I'm A Foreign Banker...Get Me Out Of Here! (19/03/2009)
- Resting Banker Girl Sleeps in Belgravia (08/07/2009)
- Resting Banker Girl and Her Mountain Men (12/08/2009)
- Resting Banker Girl Beats the Traffick (12/10/2009)
Ever since we bankers caused the global economic crisis, it has become difficult to mention our job publicly without being stigmatised. But trust me, this mess hasn't been my fault.
There have always been professions more respectable than others. Doctors usually come at the very top of the list - unless they are plastic surgeons. Further down the spectrum there are the likes of politicians and used car salesmen, and somewhere in-between were the bankers.
That was, of course, until financial wizardry - in an unhealthy combination with greed, lack of control and incentives to take huge risks without having to fear the downside - caused what currently looks like a serious global economic meltdown.
Bankers were catapulted onto the front pages of even papers not printed on orange, and their reputation went down to where it was better to admit dealing in drugs and weapons than derivatives.
Having been in the thick of it for a while, and probably a fair bit closer than many to the centre of the storm (i.e. securitisation of mortgages and similar 'toxicities'), I should be clear about one thing: I love derivatives. They are economically important and useful tools for transferring risk.
But not unlike gunpowder that can be put to good use, they can also be horribly abused.
Just because one lawyer defends a mass murderer doesn't mean all lawyers are immoral, and the fact that some bankers took on huge bets that turned sour doesn't mean that all bankers are ruthless gamblers who would sell their grandmothers for the right price.
During a recent discussion amongst colleagues about whether or not we should feel guilty about being bankers nowadays, the common take was that we were doing our jobs and not taking the decisions about which risks were good and which weren't.
Therefore there was little in the way of guilt or sense of embarrassment about being a (still employed) banker.
The guilt should - so we thought - sit with those who allowed huge leverage and risk-taking without control. Those who printed the deals making good (make-believe) money for the banks (and primarily for themselves), deals which in the meantime have lost those same banks a multiple of these revenues.
It turns out however, that these people have long left their employers, resting on the cushy packages they received during the heyday.
My guess is that they probably think about setting up a hedge fund in order to buy up the cheaply-priced toxic assets that they themselves originated.
And while I have some regret about things that happened despite believing I personally could have done nothing to prevent them, I believe it is those bankers who are rightly stigmatised.
Not that it helps those who have lost jobs, money or both.
That was, of course, until financial wizardry - in an unhealthy combination with greed, lack of control and incentives to take huge risks without having to fear the downside - caused what currently looks like a serious global economic meltdown.
Bankers were catapulted onto the front pages of even papers not printed on orange, and their reputation went down to where it was better to admit dealing in drugs and weapons than derivatives.
Having been in the thick of it for a while, and probably a fair bit closer than many to the centre of the storm (i.e. securitisation of mortgages and similar 'toxicities'), I should be clear about one thing: I love derivatives. They are economically important and useful tools for transferring risk.
But not unlike gunpowder that can be put to good use, they can also be horribly abused.
Just because one lawyer defends a mass murderer doesn't mean all lawyers are immoral, and the fact that some bankers took on huge bets that turned sour doesn't mean that all bankers are ruthless gamblers who would sell their grandmothers for the right price.
During a recent discussion amongst colleagues about whether or not we should feel guilty about being bankers nowadays, the common take was that we were doing our jobs and not taking the decisions about which risks were good and which weren't.
Therefore there was little in the way of guilt or sense of embarrassment about being a (still employed) banker.
The guilt should - so we thought - sit with those who allowed huge leverage and risk-taking without control. Those who printed the deals making good (make-believe) money for the banks (and primarily for themselves), deals which in the meantime have lost those same banks a multiple of these revenues.
It turns out however, that these people have long left their employers, resting on the cushy packages they received during the heyday.
My guess is that they probably think about setting up a hedge fund in order to buy up the cheaply-priced toxic assets that they themselves originated.
And while I have some regret about things that happened despite believing I personally could have done nothing to prevent them, I believe it is those bankers who are rightly stigmatised.
Not that it helps those who have lost jobs, money or both.
Here Is The Writer : Square Mylo
Square Mylo came to London with the intention of staying six months and never left. He has worked in Canary Wharf and in the Square Mile, but still maintains a clear conscience since he's never worked in Mayfair. Being a banker is his true calling. Maybe he should have listened more closely.
view more articles by Square Mylo
