just another brick in the wall st.
reading the news...making the news...writing the software that delivers the news...why do I still do this. just why.
"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."
- Matthew 6:24 (from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone.
You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'"
"Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."
Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!"
The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
- Mark 10:17-25
this isn't just survivor guilt.
our customers are not the rich, but the absurdly rich...the banks and CFOs and billionaire investors with enough wealth and power to invest not only in securities, but in currencies and treasury bonds and labor markets. they play dice with the fate of nations. our service, even at a premium price point, is too cheap to be valuable to most of them--they buy it as part of a package of dozens of such services, from reuters or bloomberg (when you buy more things than you can keep track of, everything comes in packages), and watch them all at once, like a supervillain with his wall of televisions. they spend long hours, day in night out, watching these screens, observing patterns, making calls, placing bets. this entire recession is just a horse race to them. dozens of jars of coffee, thousands of sleepless nights--they have devoted their lives to the pursuit of wealth. and what fruit do their labors leave society? another starbucks in your strip mall, another factory built today instead of tomorrow. the sole purpose of wall street is to help companies that are already making money off the sale of goods and services make money faster. it's an exchange--corporate executives sell a little control over their company, a little power, for a lot of money. and this gives them more control over the market, which they can sell for even more money, which buys them more power, which they sell for more money, which they continue until all the executives who made the company a success are sitting on a huge pile of money with no responsibilities while a boardroom of shareholders enjoys ultimate power over a sinking ship.
what do you, the consumer, get out of this? you get an extra large helping of innovative, value-added, synergistic fuck all.
but hey, what do we care. unlike every buisness outside the world of finance, my company is their servant, not yours. in theory we keep the machinery of capitalism well oiled, but in practice we just help the money bubble towards the top. it'd be one thing if we were helping cfos make decisions about investing the capital that opens hospitals and factories and provides jobs for the little guy...but we report on bonds, not securities. we only report on the big money stuff, at a speed that is cost-effective only to financial officers who are wealthy enough to capitalize on every tiny fluctuation in the market. we help them ride on the whoosh of floating dollars the invisible hand leaves in its wake, gleaning money from on the side effects of the exchange of goods and services rather than the sale and production of goods and services themselves. they're high rollers. they could do the sensible thing and put most of their money in the safest investments, and progressively less as the risk goes up, which would guarantee them a modest profit. but that doesn't net you a promotion or a spot on forbes' top cfos list. in this industry, "made former employer $300 million in profits" helps a resume more than "bankrupted former employer with a $3 billion loss" hurts.
when the revolution came, they were the first ones up against Liberty St. and Wall. a lot of them are penniless now. no one shed a tear.
to their credit (ha!), although the finance guys who buy our product were the ones who caused this recession--betting all their money on the riskiest and most profitable mortgages, the investments and livelihoods of millions of ordinary americans, for the sake of a pat on the back and a acrylic statuette--they were also the only ones rich enough to stop it. thanks to us they saw it coming as early as 2007. and certainly they tried. massive personal fortunes, cabinetfuls of stock portfolios, entire international banks for crying out loud--all dumped into the gaping maw of the credit beast. and it still wasn't enough to stop the inevitable. my company did okay, even as our customers were dragged screaming into the abyss. we had a pay freeze, we had our annual christmas party at a bar instead of a hotel, we got bought out by germans--but otherwise it's been life as usual. there will always be more rock star cfos to serve. sooner or later wall st. will forget the lessons of its hubris and forego market sustainability for short term profits. it always does.
the love of money is the root of all evil. mammon is its deity, our customers are its prophets, my company is its scripture, and i am its slave.
i haven't been to church in months--out of sloth, alienation, and self-consciousness. but now, if i go--how can i face God like this? how can i kneel in a pew and say, lord, i am your servant, when i am in the employ of the cult of the golden calf?
if you don't understand why i'm getting so worked up, consider this. it is 1789. you are a sixteen-year-old courier working for a private postal service for aristocrats. there's change in the air--lots of talk from intellectuals with good ideas about bringing people out of poverty and knocking the rich down a peg and such. you secretly are fascinated by this discourse, as much as it is against your professional interests. one day you fill out an order. an order just like any other--a paper-wrapped box arrives at the office, you need to deliver it to an address. you come up with a new and amazing route through the city to get you there in half the usual time, and you try it, and it works. you proudly show up at the customer's doorstep with box in hand, ten minutes earlier than expected, and swing the knocker. you're so proud of yourself. a portly man in a long white wig answers. he smiles, ruffles your hair, and tips generously. he opens the box. inside is a pistol with exactly one bullet in the chamber. before you can realize what is going on he has pointed the barrel at his temple. there is a loud bang and a puff of smoke. the man crumples to the ground; there is a deep red hole in his head and an expression of resigned indifference on his face. the pistol, smoking, falls from his grip. you are still holding the empty box.
congratulations! that man was the last nobleman in paris. you've just participated in the french revolution. and though you will go forth with your country into the ensuing months of carnage, into the following years of chaos, a part of you will always remain at that nobleman's doorstep, clutching an empty box. that sixteen-year-old boy is my historical predecessor. not even allegory, even--all that has changed is technology. no, i didn't cause the recession. no, there wasn't anything i could have done to stop it. but i played a part in letting it happen. i was the messenger. i am still holding that empty box.
someone looked at our news wire in 2007, a thing i worked on and helped create, and thought, treasury bonds are low this year, housing is up. invest in subprime mortagages. to hell with stability. the news says the credit market is safe. put it all in subprimes.
the hard thing is that i know i could leave at any moment. just put in my two weeks notice, shake some hands, and go. it would be the right thing to do. but...i can't bring myself to do it. it's no excuse that i have nowhere else to go, or that i'm scared because i have nowhere else to go. (all the rejection letters...i know i'm not the only one who feels overwhelmed by futility sending out more resumes, but i'd been turned down by so many companies even before the recession.) in the next part of the sermon on the mount quoted above, jesus says, do not say, what will i wear or what will i eat. put your faith in the lord and the lord will provide. look at the lilies of the field, they do not spin or toil, how beautiful they are clad...
i think the problem is that i just don't trust God enough. there was a time i repeated that passage to myself, night after night, and i was alone and cold and starving...all there was to eat was eggs and stale bread, and then a back to school for a semester of fear and panic, and then i got this job all of a sudden, and i thought my prayers had been answered...