Nathan Corwin, B.A., H.R.E.O.

[FDAXHunter]

He had wrapped things up with his exotic interview candidate and now escorted him to the elevator. Normally he would bid someone goodbye from the comfort of his chair and let them find their own way out of this financial tower of power (it was easy enough). However, this particular individual with his overly colorful imagination and complete lack of of common sense seemed rather unpredictable to him. Unpredictable in a suicide bomber kind-of-way. He suspected that he might just have enough gall to merely sit himself down at an empty desk and pretend that he'd gotten a job, or better yet, that he'd been working here for years. There was more than one employee here that he suspected to have gotten his job in precisely this way. This was not mere organizational paranoia on Nathan's part.



Earlier in the year, he had heard a story about RBS London where a janitor had simply sat himself down on the trading floor and pretended to be one of the bank's finest fixed income sales people. The whole charade apparently went on for months before someone eventually figured out, that despite his last name being 'Ho', he was not supposed to sell bonds to the bank's clients. Try as he might, Nathan couldn't understand what the big deal was, as bond sales was one of those jobs that clearly did not have any real requirements. In fact, the man had proven that he had bravado as well as a brain, which is more than could be said for anyone working in fixed income sales. Plus, his skills in plumbing would be sorely needed, what with RBS' balance sheet continuing to leak like a perforated condom.



As they walked past row after row of desks, he could not help but let out a chuckle as he recalled the story.



They rounded the corner to the elevators. Very reluctantly, but for the sake of good order, he shook the unsuccessful candidate's hand in farewell. He was nearly overcome with restlessness as he waited for the elevator door to slowly but ever so inevitably close in front of his face, thus marking the the jettisoning of another unwelcome visitor. But the steely gates of oblivion were not closing. Instead, the candidate stood there, with a puzzled look on his face as he examined the various buttons labeled with numbers and letters. He hovered his hand of the various destinations, then turned to Nathan, dumbfounded: "Do I go to '1'?".

"No, you go to 'L', as in 'Hell'. Goodbye... Mr. Bond?"

With that, Nathan leaned inside the elevator and pressed the button marked 'L' for 'Lobby'. The doors began to close.



He grabbed a glass of water from the water cooler. Interviewing always made him thirsty. This was primarily due to the strong wish to drown his sorrows that began immediately after an interview commenced, rather than any real need for hydration. But they did not have beer coolers on this level, so he made do with plain water for now. He had heard that there was in fact a genuine wooden beer barrel with a built-in fridge somewhere on the executive floor. The way things were going this year at the bank, there probably was not only this rumored barrel up there but any number of recreational drug dispensers. Given the institution's penchant for collecting bizarre modern art, Nathan was confident that they might have a man-sized PEZ dispenser in the shape of Hello Kitty, that would dispense bricks of cocaine when you punched it in the face.



Indeed, if one followed this thought a little further and considered the poor state of the bank's affairs at the moment, one could be forgiven for coming to one conclusion: The entire executive team must have been, and still is, in a continuous state of utter intoxication brought about by the heavy consumption of narcotics.



And once you came to this conclusion, then the recent fines the bank had to pay out made sense. After all, they had been implicated in so many legal cases to put an entire Colombian drug cartel to shame. From retail distribution all the way up to the king pin.



But, perhaps in this line of thinking laid salvation for the entire industry. If banks were going to be fined like criminal enterprises, they might as well go where the margins were higher. Drugs and credit were not that dissimilar anyway. Both were addictive, both required heavy distribution networks and both were supposed to be heavily regulated and controlled. Something the state had never managed. Redemption might come in the form of new television series called "Breaking Bad Bank"... starring Jamie Dimon.



Returning to his section of the trading floor, Nathan paced along the glass wall. His gaze took in the slowly reddening light of a setting sun, that was being reflected off the glass surface of all the other high-rise buildings in mid-town. A setting sun tended to calm him, and not for the first time he wondered why out-of-hours trading was so unpopular and overnight sessions attracted so little volume. Clearly the atmosphere was so much more relaxed later in the day. In fact, to his mind there was no question that if people started trading, at say, 18:00 then half of the world's financial crises would have been avoided. A good three-quarters of this trading floor could not even say 'good morning' before they had kick-started their brain by dousing it in caffeine. Just how exactly were people going to make good decisions in such a state?



But who was he to complain? It would all lead to inefficiencies somehow and that is ultimately what paid the rent. He shrugged and returned to his seat, trying to recapitulate the day's events.



His eyes roamed over the many windows open in front of him, looking for something that would convey meaning. The truth was that most of financial markets was random, very random even, but that did not mean that you could just lean back in your chair and close your eyes. The competition did not, and in this business you had to remain on the ball. Whether it was the queue ball, a tarball, a furball or a competitor's left ball didn't matter. As long as you kept your eye on it, you were less likely to be left behind.

[YukaRedux]

So much has been etched into my soul since 2006, but I will be forever grateful that I lived through it long enough to see an update to Nathan Corwin. Bravo.

[zee4]

Applause

[Cheng]

[i]Drugs and credit where not that dissimilar anyway. Both were addictive, both required heavy distribution networks and both were supposed to be heavily regulated and controlled.[/i]



Applause



Worship