Forum Post: A testimony and confession from an ex-trader in City of London

First of all, I would like to express my strongest support for this OWS revolution! This is something I have been craving for. As an ex-trader involved in designing and trading those toxic structured financial products, I would like to confess here and show the deepest regrets!

I graduated from one of the top universities in UK and started my first job as a credit trader at one of the major international bank in City of London, aka Wall Street in UK. The role of my team was to create those "invisible" ( we use the term "synthetic") financial products, namely "CDO", using the underlying subprime mortgages in US. My team also helped designing some bespoke packages to cater for the clients' demand. For example, I recall once we were betting on the average life expectancy of American people, against a notorious American bank. In our benefits, we hope the general American people to die earlier and we hope there will be more catastrophes to cost people's lives. We give this product a sounded name "hedging".

I quit my job 18 months after I joined the bank, simply because I couldn't watch my conscience gone. The people working around me were showing the ugliest face of humanbeings, which I don't have. Yes, they are the smartest people in the world, with the best educational backgrounds. The nature of this job is to create a volatile world, the more chaos, the more volatilities, thus more money to make! Bankers never wish we live in a peaceful world. They push up the price of sugar, rice, etc, so that poor people get poorer, more wealth goes to their pocket. It is simple to understand this, as they do not create any new and tangible wealth, they gain wealth by the re-distribution of wealth, from poor people to rich.

In summary, I can tell you guys that our world will definitely be MUCH better without bankers and traders. Their existence dries up the real economy and makes our life worse.