Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World

The journey included my return to China, where I had first visited as a young banker working for the now-defunct investment bank Lehman Brothers. Financial instruments were less complex in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But it was a time when the role of finance was rapidly changing. So was the nature of the global economy and the risk imposed upon it by bankers. They altered it, trade by trade, bet by bet.

At the time, I was working on the futures and options desk while moving from my master’s to PhD coursework in statistics. I held a purist attitude about analytics (the math behind financial instruments) in contrast with the cocky, salesperson mentality of other colleagues pushing financial products. In my early twenties, I’d argue with the salespeople I worked with, one in particular, about the numbers and who got credit for what new analytical approach. Taking credit, whether or not it was yours to take, was part of the Wall Street survival tool kit. I was never particularly good at that part.

To quell the bickering, management decided to send me and that salesperson on a road trip together—around Asia. If we didn’t kill each other, in the process we’d sell some products or, at least, open accounts. I’d explain the math; the salesperson would sell the products. He was a hothead, but in the end, after various near-death experiences, including our driver’s rush against oncoming traffic to get us to the airport in the Philippines, we reached a truce and garnered some businesses