low-cut satin, grooms barely of shaving age.
Derivatives-related scandals were piling up. Mike was keeping a running tally of the amounts involved: $12.2 billion.
“Where’s the Fed in all this?” I asked, wanting scuttlebutt. I already knew he wasn’t a fan of Alan Greenspan. (“He’s no god. He’s just been lucky. Analyzes data but ignores human behavior. Says that’s anecdotal.”)
“Complicit.
Entirely
supportive of the notion that we should be a self-policing industry. Which is fine and dandy, except in good times, we get greedy. We get
lax
.” He stopped, eyes unfocused, remembering something, then shook his skinny body as if to get rid of the thought. “Self-policing. Who are they kidding?”
“Why kill the goose? Where’s the incentive in that? You’d think we’d cosset it, protect it in every way possible?”
“Well you might ask. Three words: Short-term gain.”
“Two words, not three. Bankers are
that
stupid?”
“
That
stupid.”
I had grown up thinking bankers were conspiratorial, controlled, far-seeing. If they were motivated by self-interest, they were also prudent. As one of many enlisted to help put out the five-alarm fires that regularly threatened to consume Niedecker, I was coming to the conclusion that the opposite was true. Bankers operated by the seat of their pants, crossed their fingers, winged it—anything but “proactive.” They allowed markets and rogue traders to surprise them at every turn. They were as subject to fashion and flattery and incapable of objectivity or seeing the larger picture as ordinary mortals. As I’d quoted to Mike during one of our sessions,
Bankers are just like anybody else / Except richer.
Ogden Nash. Mike had snuffled his approval.
Mike turned the conversation to an item he’d seen in the
Times
about Iris Murdoch, who had developed Alzheimer’s. He was a fan of her novels: “Philosophical. Not afraid of ideas.” To my taste, Murdoch’s writing was too ripe, too contrived. Anyway, all I read now was the financial press. I suppose Mike thought I would be interested. In his way, he was throwing me a bone of empathy.
“It’s hard to imagine a mind like hers turning to Jell-O,” he said.
“Yeah. Hard.” Insensitive of him, but I didn’t take offense. Instead, I was remembering a lecture given by Dame Iris at my university years ago: Murdoch and her husband, John Bayley, sturdy, plate-faced, English, dressed in matching duffle coats, and my boyfriend of the time and I—how old were we, seventeen?—also in matching duffle coats. Our lives in front of us.
“Engagé. That’s what Murdoch was,” mused Mike.
Engag
é? I suppressed a snicker. Not a word you heard often in the hallways and cubicles at Niedecker. “Talking of engagement, why isn’t anyone upset about the revelations in today’s
Journal
?”
My fatalism had been shaken by a full-page article in the
Wall Street Journal
about a notorious racist who’d been a Niedecker client from the sixties up until a few years ago. Niedecker, which had funneled money for the client to a segregationist institute in the South, had defended itself with a specious argument, saying that the firm had taken the man on as a client in the sixties when attitudes about racism were different. “The clarity with which one sees issues today is different from thirty years ago,” Bart had told the press. (I could picture him, a model of patient understanding. Bart always told us never to get angry at the press. Instead, we should pity them: their annual salaries wouldn’t amount to a fraction of our bonuses.) Asked for complete records of transactions, Bart claimed they’d been destroyed in a fire. The dog ate the homework.
“Plenty of people were seeing racism with clarity in the sixties,” I said to Mike.
“You’re so naïve,” he replied. “Bankers are pimps, enablers. They’re”—he paused to find the exact word—“immoral. No, amoral. They hop on the money. What’s in the
Derivatives-related scandals were piling up. Mike was keeping a running tally of the amounts involved: $12.2 billion.
“Where’s the Fed in all this?” I asked, wanting scuttlebutt. I already knew he wasn’t a fan of Alan Greenspan. (“He’s no god. He’s just been lucky. Analyzes data but ignores human behavior. Says that’s anecdotal.”)
“Complicit.
Entirely
supportive of the notion that we should be a self-policing industry. Which is fine and dandy, except in good times, we get greedy. We get
lax
.” He stopped, eyes unfocused, remembering something, then shook his skinny body as if to get rid of the thought. “Self-policing. Who are they kidding?”
“Why kill the goose? Where’s the incentive in that? You’d think we’d cosset it, protect it in every way possible?”
“Well you might ask. Three words: Short-term gain.”
“Two words, not three. Bankers are
that
stupid?”
“
That
stupid.”
I had grown up thinking bankers were conspiratorial, controlled, far-seeing. If they were motivated by self-interest, they were also prudent. As one of many enlisted to help put out the five-alarm fires that regularly threatened to consume Niedecker, I was coming to the conclusion that the opposite was true. Bankers operated by the seat of their pants, crossed their fingers, winged it—anything but “proactive.” They allowed markets and rogue traders to surprise them at every turn. They were as subject to fashion and flattery and incapable of objectivity or seeing the larger picture as ordinary mortals. As I’d quoted to Mike during one of our sessions,
Bankers are just like anybody else / Except richer.
Ogden Nash. Mike had snuffled his approval.
Mike turned the conversation to an item he’d seen in the
Times
about Iris Murdoch, who had developed Alzheimer’s. He was a fan of her novels: “Philosophical. Not afraid of ideas.” To my taste, Murdoch’s writing was too ripe, too contrived. Anyway, all I read now was the financial press. I suppose Mike thought I would be interested. In his way, he was throwing me a bone of empathy.
“It’s hard to imagine a mind like hers turning to Jell-O,” he said.
“Yeah. Hard.” Insensitive of him, but I didn’t take offense. Instead, I was remembering a lecture given by Dame Iris at my university years ago: Murdoch and her husband, John Bayley, sturdy, plate-faced, English, dressed in matching duffle coats, and my boyfriend of the time and I—how old were we, seventeen?—also in matching duffle coats. Our lives in front of us.
“Engagé. That’s what Murdoch was,” mused Mike.
Engag
é? I suppressed a snicker. Not a word you heard often in the hallways and cubicles at Niedecker. “Talking of engagement, why isn’t anyone upset about the revelations in today’s
Journal
?”
My fatalism had been shaken by a full-page article in the
Wall Street Journal
about a notorious racist who’d been a Niedecker client from the sixties up until a few years ago. Niedecker, which had funneled money for the client to a segregationist institute in the South, had defended itself with a specious argument, saying that the firm had taken the man on as a client in the sixties when attitudes about racism were different. “The clarity with which one sees issues today is different from thirty years ago,” Bart had told the press. (I could picture him, a model of patient understanding. Bart always told us never to get angry at the press. Instead, we should pity them: their annual salaries wouldn’t amount to a fraction of our bonuses.) Asked for complete records of transactions, Bart claimed they’d been destroyed in a fire. The dog ate the homework.
“Plenty of people were seeing racism with clarity in the sixties,” I said to Mike.
“You’re so naïve,” he replied. “Bankers are pimps, enablers. They’re”—he paused to find the exact word—“immoral. No, amoral. They hop on the money. What’s in the
Similar Books
