That was a question from a nine year old, that shut me up for good a few years ago. I was at that time interning at bond options trading desk at a competing investment bank. And as a part of a lowly intern's job, with no regard for the ivy league education, I was pressed into action as a tour guide for bunch of school children. I have always maintained that trading floor is no place for children, and that if you work there, I strongly urge you that you tell your child you play piano to the monkeys in the Bronx zoo, or sing the nessun dorma to the ducks at st James' park. I digress. Resentful though I was, I still took the kids around, after the thought that "the offer" and the "guaranteed bonus" could still be rescinded came to my mind.
I showed them the fellow members of the mercenary creed, hundreds of them. The animated fights between traders and the salesmen, the occasional trader banging his desk after losing a bit, or maybe a lot. The researchers cooking up the lies to feed the pension funds, and the salesmen feeding those. The kids looked amused, they asked me what the charts on most peoples screens were and how many computers there were on the floor and the sort. I was pretty pleased with myself, and thought of taking up tour guiding as an avocation. Till the point the little devil asked me the above question. I was about to say " We make money, smart guy", I resisted the urge.
I had, till that point, never thought about it. When you are at Columbia you are led to believe that the only thing worthwhile in this world is working on wall street. It is said that even a music major there works on wall street. The question, however kept me up all night that night. I tried to convince myself of my usefulness by thinking that I was somehow bringing together the supply and demand of money. It was a lame answer to a very profound question. I still don't have a good answer.
The question came back to haunt me again a few month's later when I visited my beloved Mumbai. My five or six year old cousin told me she wanted to be a doctor when she grew older. When pressed for a reason she said it was something her granny had told her. I wondered about the psyche of Indian parents or any parents for that matter (Michael once told me that he had to tell his granny he was a doctor for her to think he did anything worthwhile). Come to think of it, there's nothing wrong there. Doctors cure us, engineers build the things we use, teachers teach us. The results of their day's work are easy to see.
I then asked some of the kids at a nearby school. Its a small school, not the DPS sort where you rich guys send your kids. This was the sort where your drivers kid would be. The answers I got ranged from teacher, doctor, policeman, Sachin Tendulkar to Shah Rukh Khan. Now that complicates things, what good in the world do Tendulkar and Monsieur Khan do? I don't mean they are as useless as yours truly, but certainly the fruits of their actions as not as simple. Tendulkar may bring an unlikely victory to Team India, but he doesn't "make" anything.
Well then, its about the visibility. These kids see Tendulkar on TV, they see their teacher every day, they have been t their neighborhood doctor. So if I ask the kids outside a Manhattan Synagogue, will one of them tell me he aspires to be a trader?
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