YOUR SAVINGS THEIR BONUSES
Your money? Once deposited in a bank, it's gone.
This newsletter has been inspired by the confessions of an insider who worked for Wall Street in the roaring years of the late 1970s - 1980s, narrated in one of his books.
If I had known these things when I started to work in banking, probably my life would have been totally different. But now, more than ever, I am glad to have given up my job in banking in 2021 after 32 years. When I understood how bad it is for the customers, I resigned, saying goodbye to my hefty bonuses, but welcoming my clean conscience. This book, with these confessions, lays it all out inequivocally and lets the reader understand the mentality and the driving force that guides an entire industry totally focused on screwing the customers.
Like a competition. A championship of voltures where the highest price, that is the heftiest bonus, goes to the trader that is capable of ruining the most people for the highest amount of money. The biggest driving forces behind these traders’ ruthless behaviour? Mostly, a big ego compouned by a snobbish wife by his side yearning to go shopping in Paris and London every weekend, from New York, travelling via Concorde and stretched limos. But also another very important component that is the fear of being humiliated by cocky, arrogant and foul-mouthed coworkers, ready to destroy those who showed some weakness and mercy towards the customers.
I personally witnessed this kind of behaviour in one now disgraced Italian bank: BIPOP CARIRE, which had a model for growth based on the same principle. The workforce did not include many clerks, but mostly salespeople. The males were hired because of their NLP soft talk persuasion and crocodile smiles, and the ladies, according to how many buttons they were willing to keep undone on their blouses in the décolleté area.
The practice, after a successful sale of junk stuff to customers, as I was told, consisted to meet in the office and to dance altogether in triumph on the desk!
The rise and fall of BIPOP CARIRE took three years. The bankers kept their bonuses. The customers lost their money.
After you know these things, you will never be able to look at the bank workers with the same eyes: YOUR MONEY=THEIR BONUSES! There are no emotions. No empathy.
Every bank takes your money and immediately goes to Wall Street Casino to gamble with it. What happens next?
The losses are partly socialised, partly swept under the quintillion derivatives toxic finance carpet in the shadow banking dark room.
The gains are spent by the bankers for their insatiable lifestyle, which in some cases is now also very much broadly understood, thanks to the Epstein files.
In the book that I am about to name and quote in this newsletter, we are finally able to learn directly from someone who was there. Someone who saw and personally operated as a trader on the trading floor of one of the most powerful investment banks on Wall Street.
Theory or practice? Whenever one wants to learn something is always best to go to those who know the practice. This rule applies in every field of life.
What do we learn by reading these confessions? The practice!
For instance, a very important perspective on how the mortgage market started, by whom, and the propulsive milieu that originated the enormity of the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. Which guiding principles?
Without these elements, it can only remain a vague impression, and it is not possible to fully understand the rotten core of the entire financial system guided by Wall Street.
To enter this mentality, we need to stop looking at the big picture from a retail point of view and start thinking in terms of trillions, quadrillions, even quintillions of dollars that these financial institutions are capable of handling with leverage and toxic derivatives and know that in order to multiply and leverage that kind of astronomical numbers, they need:
our savings
our relentless work ethic and discipline
our gullibility
Under this pile of make-believe lies the real world that is us, who work and produce to sustain it all until the mass becomes so gigantic that it will collapse all at once.
What can we do? Well, one easy solution could be avoiding being under it when it blows up! How? By pulling our money out before it becomes worthless. What to do with the money? Buy anything that is rare and precious. What is rare, precious and also money? Only gold and silver.
When you look again at your money in the bank and in any financial investment, keep in mind that what is narrated in what follows is truly what happens to every dollar that you thought was yours.
How corrupt do you think the banking system is?
Very corrupt
Enormously corrupt
Disgustingly corrupt
Criminally corrupt
All of the above
Before answering, please read my other newsletter: CONFESSIONS OF A MONOPOLIST
After reading it, you are prepared for what follows: the Confessions of a WALL STREET TRADER.
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