[b]Michael Lewis
He was the person for whom the clock was always running out, the game was always tied, and the ball was always in his hands.[/b]
Even from his recliner.
The first day after the merger, Brad got a call from a worried female employee, who whispered, “There is a guy in here with suspenders walking around with a baseball bat in his hands, taking swings.” That turned out to be Carlin’s CEO, Jeremy Frommer, who, whatever else he was, was not RBC nice. One of Frommer’s signature poses was feet up on his desk, baseball bat swinging wildly over his head while some poor shoeshine guy tried to polish his shoes.
For some a fucking hero, for others a fucking asshole.
The markets were now run by technology, but the technologists were still treated like tools. Nobody bothered to explain the business to them, but they were forced to adapt to its demands and exposed to its failures—which was, perhaps, why there had been so many more conspicuous failures.
Just not enough to actually matter.
The difference between Strauss and Ranieri? says one trader still at Salomon. That’s easy. Strauss wouldn’t stoop to use the men’s room on the trading floor. He’d go upstairs. Ranieri would piss on your desk.
Let’s come up with the equivalent of that here.
Risk, I had learned, was a commodity in itself.
In other words, along with everything else.
The U.S. stock market was now a class system, rooted in speed, of haves and have-nots. The haves paid for nanoseconds; the have-nots had no idea that a nanosecond had value.
Though none of them gave a nanofuck.