Let’s admit we’re jealous. Let’s finally allow the admiration of the financial industry within us. Who wouldn’t want to be a big bank? A column by Anselm Neft.
A trader on the New York Stock Exchange. Nice job!IMAGO/John Angelillo
This is the latest installment in Anselm Neft’s humorous column Spot the Error.
As soon as the ruble stops rolling, everyone starts picking on “the bankers” again. They are important pillars of our community and should be treated as such. Because only happy financial service providers can achieve top performance for the general public. So let’s finally thank them for their hard work and look in awe at the history of money multiplication.
We have a natural respect for many professions: nurses, for example, but of course also craftsmen, construction workers, sewer cleaners or daycare workers. We know that these people provide vital services to all of us. Accordingly, they are paid, cared for, and so honored everywhere that some tend to be arrogant. Some are even able to live off their pension after they retire. The situation is different for investment bankers, fund managers, speculators and other financial experts. They are highly qualified artists who show us that life is not just about the useful, but also about beauty.
Maren Kaschner
To the author
The birth of protection racket
Not only to preserve wealth, but also to increase it, is an old wish of mankind. In the distant past, people still went about their work quite dumbly: hunting, collecting, farming, now and then a carved female figure with voluptuous curves – our ape-like ancestors couldn’t think of more.
But then they settled down and began to hoard crops, livestock and jewellery. Fear of raiders grew, warriors were trained, and high priests began to tell one about horses. In glorious antiquity, slaves and women worked, while masters dealt with administration, war and philosophy.
Later it was called “making your money work for you” because money doesn’t stink. And to this day, many people call their wives “my piece of gold” for good reason. The old knights did it at least as cleverly: They declared land, including cattle, crops and farmers their property, let the lower classes work and in return guaranteed protection “from bad guys” (in case of doubt from themselves). The “protection racketeering” method was born and is still admired around the world today. Many children want to be knights, nobody wants to be a farmer. Farmers stink and somehow always remain poor, while knights miraculously get rich.
Broker, trader, pawn catcher
As clever as the nobility acted, their time had come when the merchant class was preparing to amass even greater wealth. Instead of wasting days in skirmishes, poisonings, and courtly etiquette, slide rules were pushed until they glowed. A merchant’s core competency to this day: buying something cheaper and selling it more expensive than it’s worth. It’s about international product expertise and smart market analyses, but also about nice words, storytelling, customer needs, psychology! The greedy can better capitalize on nothing than on the greed of others. Which brings us to the investment banking profession.
Banking is the pinnacle of human evolution
How stupid merchants seem to us these days who sailed halfway around the world for a few bear pelts in order to then peddle them profitably elsewhere. Poor people just hadn’t heard of derivatives, put options, or credit default swaps.
Book money, bank money, fictitious money! Algorithms that outperform the market. Billions can be conveniently moved back and forth on the computer, appearing and disappearing as if by magic. It is wonderfully easy to forget that somewhere people are toiling away or resources are running out in this artful world of the clearest mathematics. Because this isn’t about earthly hardship, material nonsense and flat traction. Dazzling monuments of human creativity are erected here. Cathedrals of beautiful promises, hopes and blooming imaginations.
You have to be a big bank
Let’s admit it, we’re jealous. Let’s finally allow the admiration of the financial sector within us that we laboriously hide behind contempt. Who wouldn’t want to be a big bank? Central banks would create money out of thin air on demand. Zack. Just like that, so you can lend it to your sleaziest friends. You can already note the amount lent as your own profit and is therefore wonderfully liquid. If the friends then gambled away too much money or the most complex pyramid schemes come to their costly end, the father state helps out, i.e. the dear people who pay taxes. Then there’s a bit of grumbling, but you don’t understand yourself what happened. And then the fun starts all over again. Splendid!
It’s about time the global financial system finally got the recognition it deserves! It should be declared a World Heritage Site because it is at the pinnacle of our civilization.
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