Moral Hazard Read Online Free PDF Page B

of it, then?” coughing as he asked and gesturing at the towers behind us, at Niedecker.
    “The finance part is falling into place. It’s like a foreign language. Immerse yourself and it begins to make sense. But the corporate side. Jeepers. That’s much harder. And the guys I work for—holy cow. I’m realizing I’ve led a sheltered life.” Mike laughed.
    Several days before, I was directed to talk to Bart about a group of Chinese sponsored by Niedecker to visit the United States to study the financial markets. He had done more than warm to his subject. Apoplectic, he’d barked, “Goddamn communists! I don’t know why we’re helping them.” I related this and moved on to Hanny and his tirades. If Mike knew his O’Hara and wasn’t enthralled with Nixon, I figured I was on safe ground.
    “Poorly socialized,” he said. “But at least you know where you stand with them.”
    “True. But…” Agitated. His observation hadn’t seemed sufficient. I was about to say something to that effect when Mike interrupted.
    “Can I give you some advice?”
    “Okay.” Feeling small.
    “That’s not going to change.” Gesturing behind us, again. “And those guys aren’t going to change. If you keep throwing yourself against Niedecker, against them, you’ll break into a million pieces. Round off your sharp edges. Turn yourself into an anthropologist.”
    “A naturalist with an ant colony.”
    “That’s the spirit. You know, Wall Street isn’t as bad as it seems. Sure, it gets its share of bigots and silver-spoon types. That’s the downside. But it also tolerates eccentrics who wouldn’t find employment anywhere else. You’d be surprised. At one time, having a short attention span was the
only
qualification you needed to work down here.” His peculiar nasal laugh. “It’s not quite that way now. The dead hand of Human Resources homogenizing everything.” He broke off to light another cigarette. “I know one guy, a trader, who’s an anarchist and proud of it. But nobody cares because he’s good at his job. And then there’re people like you and me.”
    “You?” Offhand. As if I weren’t dying to know.
    In the clipped cadences of the busy Wall Streeter, he gave me his history. “Columbia, majored in mathematics. Joined SDS. The antiwar organization.” A glance my way. “Don’t look so surprised.”
    A rabble-rouser from the sixties running the risk-management unit at Niedecker? I was surprised, but it was no more improbable than my writing speeches for its executives. Actually, I was tickled. I’d done time on the barricades myself.
    “Harvard for postdoc studies,” continued Mike. “Hot bed for quants. Steve Ross was there. Also a radical. Or at least he was then. Marx turned him onto economics, finance. Same here.” Another glance to gauge my reaction. “We’re not the first to arrive on the Street via the Moor, although nobody is going to admit it.” The Moor. My oh my. Marx’s children’s nickname for their father. This was unreal.
    Silence. “After Harvard, a stint at J. P. Morgan. Boring bunch. Heads up butts, minds in neutral. And then Niedecker. It’s been fifteen years.” Another glance. “You don’t know who Steve Ross is, do you?”
    I shook my head.
    “Option pricing trees. Brilliant guy.” He paused. “You’ve probably read Adam Smith, Keynes, maybe some Galbraith, not much else, right?”
    “Right.”
    “I’ll send you a couple of books.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Gotta go,” said Mike, stubbing out his second cigarette.
    “Me too.”
    We walked together to the Winter Garden, passing other smokers, some in groups, some solitary. The promised books arrived in the internal mail the next day, and my education in modern finance began.

8
    We had gone through the nightly routine.
    First, a Stouffer’s frozen dinner, the extent of my cooking abilities. In the good years, Bailey always cooked for us. For him, food was a ceremony; even if he were eating by himself, he set the