[puzzle-out]

"Gradually, I was descending into the strange social isolation of my colleagues. I spent less and less time with normal people and more time with people from the bank." I enjoyed this article, because it suggests that, for all their occupation of what they thought to be 'the real world', bankers were living as bubble-like an existence as a fourteenth-century monk.

[Rod]

Dude, this guy was a trader. Don't insult him by calling him a "banker"!! Traders and bankers are entirely different beasts...

[Adam503]

Under the system in place since the Glass Steagall Act of 1933, traders and bankers were supposed to be entirely different beasts.

The Gramm Leach Bliley Act of 1999 repealed a big chunk of the Glass Steagall Act, commercial and investment banks were allowed to consolidate.

Since 1999, bankers and traders have been the same thing. That why the entire financial system just came down on our heads. There was no separation these different entities. No firewall between the speculators and the life savings of retirees.

[Rod]

That is quite true, but that is not what I meant.

I can't speak for everyone who works in the financial services industry, but when I was in London working at a hedge fund, the word banker denoted someone who did corporate finance (e.g., M&A, IPO's, etc), not someone who works at a bank. All the traders I have met in my life loathed investment bankers, so calling them bankers is the surest way to infuriate them.

Like you said, in the old days, banks did not do trading. Back then, everyone who worked at a bank worked in banking indeed. These days, banks do everything. In fact, a few years ago Goldman Sachs was generating most of its revenue via trading, not via investment banking deals. Therefore, denoting someone who works at a bank by banker is saying absolutely nothing because the guy could be a banker... or a trader, a broker, a quant, etc etc etc.

What I meant when I wrote that traders and bankers are entirely different beasts is that their cultures are totally different, though they might work in the same bank. Traders like to think they're much smarter than bankers, they work less hours, they don't work during the weekends because the market is closed, they cultivate a culture of aggressiveness, and they can be quite rude. Bankers on the other hand have to schmooze clients, obey more social norms, work 90-100 hours per week, put facetime to impress their bosses, and stare at Excel tables until their eyes bleed..,

[Maro]

They still are...