Dear Barack,
Congratulations on your appointment today – I wish you well in your endeavours and trust you have prepared yourself for the next 8 years (if all goes well) in the highest office the US offers. The world is hoping you will perform half as well as we wish you too.
I write to you today as a humble quasi-governmental employee. I know you have a lot of issues waiting for you in the form of e-mails received on your widely-publicised Blackberry, but I’ve cunningly placed a red-asterisk next to mine so it stands out when you browse your folder – I thought you’d appreciate the initiative I have shown in grabbing your attention, much like you have grabbed the world’s with your fresh and appealing approach. Notice please that I have not touched upon the “race-angle” involved in your incredible rise-to-the-top – I do not see what is has to do with anything – after all no one has congratulated me on being originally Lebanese but fighting through prejudice and injustice to work at such a great US firm – OK, maybe your achievement is slightly more impressive, but you get my point.
Anyway, once you and the family have worked out the most important choice facing you – “which puppy do we buy?” – I would like to highlight a request echoed by a great number of my peers in the financial world. For months now we have read disparaging stories about ourselves – how we are nothing but money-loving-greedy-immoral-dishonest-slippery characters, almost as vilified now in the press as reality-TV stars (and anyone that has ever watched UK Big Brother understands that that is baaaaaaad press). How is it that I have fallen so far in reputation in the eyes of my family and friends - not to mention all the girls I used to try to impress at parties – in less than a year? In fact, this time last year I was very much a private sector employee and worked for one of the US’s most respected and well-know financial “powerhouses” (boy those were good days). We are now treated quite unfairly I feel. Many of us “investment bankers” are a hard-working humble bunch, helping to serve our client-base and inform of market moves as well as provide guidance on research and general views on the macro/micro economic environment. I felt I was providing a much-needed and appreciated service, imparting my own nuggets-of-wisdom when necessary and helping those that paid-us handsomely to navigate the murky waters of financial jargon. Where did it all go wrong? Why do my family and friends no longer consider what I do as a “respectable” occupation and scowl at me when now refused mortgages and consumer loans? And please tell me why those girls at parties and clubs that used to fall over themselves to meet a “banker” now snigger knowingly when I tell them what I do?? Where did it all go wrong!?
I am not going to resurface all those arguments about whether it was originally Bill Clinton’s “American-Dream bill” in 1999 - forcing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to extend home-loans to “non-traditional applicants” - or a lack of regulatory oversight during Bush’s Republican tenure that has brought this shame upon the investment banking community. I do want to ask you though, to do what you can as soon as possible to allow my friends and I to hold our heads slightly higher than pavement-eye-level and bring us back out into the bars holding our glasses of champagne and prevent us from cowering in corners at friends’ house-parties (obviously these friends are lawyers and doctors – people with respected and still well-paid professions) to reclaim our roles as kings-of-the-living-room. I am sure there are some that miss us out there. Failing that, how about removing some of the heavily-tarnished negative impressions of our industry just enough to allow us to walk into a sandwich shop at lunch-time and not immediately get asked if we would like the “3-for-1 bankers special”!! Would that be a fair compromise Mr. President?
I know it is asking a lot given we are likely only in the midst of the beginnings of another crunch, the dreaded “credit-card crunch” as the massive lay-offs and difficult trading conditions across retailers and financials alike will lead to individuals inevitably defaulting on their payments and exacerbating a problem that just does not seem to want to go away. However, should blame really be placed on us for GDP Growth flat-lining (+2.5% est. global) in 2009 and making it hard to even earn money on your cash-savings (anyone getting better than Turkey’s 15% on Turkish Lira deposits?). Should we really be plastered across the front-page of newspapers on a daily-basis and heralded as the “Titans-of-Sin”? I understand that certain individuals (uhmm..Madoff) deserve all the bad karma, voodoo and whatever else the world wants to throw at them for the sins they have indeed committed against ordinary folk (not sure though how ordinary Madoff’s clients were) – but asking an entire industry and many of its well-groomed and politely charming individuals who have always aspired to do the best by their clients (you guys at the back stop laughing please) is overly harsh and quite frankly makes people like me want to go off and do something useful and worthwhile for the world like educating children in the “art-of-marketing” in the remote Amazonian-basin. Do you really want a bunch of ex-bankers running amok around the rainforests? Hmmm..didn’t think so.
So Mr. President, please think about the wrongly harassed and harangued bankers out there, do what you can of course to save the economy, steer the US and the rest of the world back onto a course of success, solve the age-old Israeli-Palestinian issue, quietly withdraw from and leave behind a strongly-democratic Iraq, placate China enough to prevent a fire-sale of $1trn in US assets,, protect the environment, track-down OBL, ensure more planes miraculously land on water and earn global respect for your country once again - no pressure though. Please also use some of your magical eloquence and language to reflect the lost-age of the charismatic banker and think of us as we nurse our drinks whilst propped up at the bar (I miss those VIP tables sooo much) – some deserve more blame than others and it wasn’t all our fault. Good luck to you…and all of us.
Yours sincerely,
Hani Kobrossi
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