Where will it all end? I've been watching the news with the slack-jawed expression of an inbred redneck over the past few days, as one venerable financial institution after another bites the dust in spectacular style.
The whole thing is mental - these gleaming dons of capitalism succumbing to the ordinary rank and file of working class America, as countless defaulted mortgage payments suddenly sees the have-nots calling the shots, albeit unintentionally....
Seeing people leaving Lehman Brothers on TV was bizarre - during my early years I went for a hell of a lot of job interviews with Investment Banks; not to be a big cheese obviously, but for entry level positions that would still have represented a 70% pay rise in some cases. I remember being on the 49th floor of One Canada Square for an interview with Bank of New York, and coming out afterwards looking up at Lehman's gleaming tower block in the centre of Canary Wharf.
Goldman Sachs was my big "what if" during this period - a story I have recounted whilst under the influence many many times, lamenting, "I coulda been a contender, if only things had turned out differently...." like so many other also rans down the pub. The basic premise was this: started work at my current employer on Monday, got a call from an agency on Wednesday saying that they had an interview for Goldmans on Thursday - the job was pretty much guaranteed as long as I:
a) didn't mind shafting the company that had just given me a job by leaving with no notice whatsoever, and
b) just didn't say anything wrong to stuff up the interview.
I did actually debate for quite some time over ditching the people I was working for - at heart I am a moral-ish type, which perhaps explains the fact I am watching events unfold from the relative safety of a retail bank (which isn't called HBOS), rather than trying to work out how to maintain a cocaine habit and penthouse apartment now that my £100K a year job has disappeared down the dumper at a moment's notice.
Needless to say, the first question I was asked at the interview was "why do you want to leave your current job when you've only been there for a few days?". Now, what I should have said was, "because you are Goldman Sachs, and I would sell my own granny just for the opportunity to come and clean your arse". What I actually said was, "because the job's pretty mundane". At this, their faces collectively fell, and they explained that the job they had was also 'quite mundane'. No shit Sherlock - you're looking for someone at 24 hours notice and offering £10 an hour - I kind of guessed I wasn't going to be head of Derivatives Trading or anything.
Alas, my goose was cooked, and I now have the perhaps unusual distinction of being refused a job at Goldman Sachs because they didn't believe I would have the commitment to still be there in 6 months.
Where all this crazy economics is going to end is anyone's guess. I'm going to stick my toe in the big lake of speculative, unfounded opinion and say that perhaps it was inevitable and fitting that a country such as the US, which has flexed its financial muscles repeatedly to dominate the entire world, should potentially be brought to its knees by the collapse of the financial markets.
It will certainly be interesting to see what the incumbent President, whoever it may be, will decide to focus his attention on. Being parachuted in to be leader of a country who's actual government is being threatened with a dodgy credit rating might cause a hasty reassessment of priorities, and perhaps there will be a decision to get their own house in order before attempting to dictate how other countries should be governed.
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