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It°Ps rare that someone should develop an obsession with Wall Street with
out sharing its driving passion, the accumulation of money.
It would probably take years of psychoanalysis to untangle that contradiction, not to
mention others too sensitive to name here.
No doubt that contradictory obsession has early roots, but its most po-
tent adult influence was probably my first job out of college, at a small
brokerage firm in downtown Manhattan.
The firm had been started by a former Bell Labs physicist, who wanted to use his quantitative skills to
analyze and trade a then-new instrument known as listed options.
The refugee physicist was considerably ahead of his time; few people under-
stood options in 1975, and fewer still were interested in using the kinds of
high-tech trading strategies that would later sweep Wall Street.
My title was secretary to the chairman, which meant not only that I
typed his letters, but also that I got his lunch and went out to buy him new
socks when he°Pd left his old ones in a massage parlor.
And I studied the place like an anthropologist, absorbing the mentality and culture of money.
It was fascinating in its own way, but it also struck me as utterly cynical
and empty, a profound waste of human effort.
One morning, riding the elevator up to work, I noticed a cop standing
next to me, a gun on his hip. I realized in an instant that all the sophisti-
cated machinations that went on upstairs and around the whole Wall Street
neighborhood rested ultimately on force.
Financial power, too, grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Of course a serious analysis of the political economy of finance has to delve into all those sophisticated machinations, but the image of that gun should be kept firmly in mind.
out sharing its driving passion, the accumulation of money.
It would probably take years of psychoanalysis to untangle that contradiction, not to
mention others too sensitive to name here.
No doubt that contradictory obsession has early roots, but its most po-
tent adult influence was probably my first job out of college, at a small
brokerage firm in downtown Manhattan.
The firm had been started by a former Bell Labs physicist, who wanted to use his quantitative skills to
analyze and trade a then-new instrument known as listed options.
The refugee physicist was considerably ahead of his time; few people under-
stood options in 1975, and fewer still were interested in using the kinds of
high-tech trading strategies that would later sweep Wall Street.
My title was secretary to the chairman, which meant not only that I
typed his letters, but also that I got his lunch and went out to buy him new
socks when he°Pd left his old ones in a massage parlor.
And I studied the place like an anthropologist, absorbing the mentality and culture of money.
It was fascinating in its own way, but it also struck me as utterly cynical
and empty, a profound waste of human effort.
One morning, riding the elevator up to work, I noticed a cop standing
next to me, a gun on his hip. I realized in an instant that all the sophisti-
cated machinations that went on upstairs and around the whole Wall Street
neighborhood rested ultimately on force.
Financial power, too, grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Of course a serious analysis of the political economy of finance has to delve into all those sophisticated machinations, but the image of that gun should be kept firmly in mind.
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