Chasing the Dragon
Here’s an excerpt from my memoir from the desperately bleak days before the demise of Lehman Brothers in 2008. It feels eerily appropriate for today, the day we broke the yen levy…
My soul began to resemble that of an opium fiend. I was chasing the dragon. I was bouncing from high to low within a matter of hours. My nerves were shredded. I was a mess. I flew back to London and considered drafting a resignation letter for my clients. What is the fucking point if the financial authorities won’t play fair? You catch them with their underpants around their ankles, then they pull them back up and call you a liar. I was one step removed, injured but not fatally, and I was sure that the truth couldn’t be denied much longer; that time was running out for my opponents.
The days dragged on. Hours felt like weeks. Risk positions were thrown over the side (closed) as I sought to buy time. I gave up even checking the news. I had made a suicide pact. I was strapped in; there would be no resignation letter. I was going down, all guns blazing, like Tony Montana in the atrium of his narco-funded Miami mansion. It was them or me. I just got on with other things. I tried not to obsess over it, but it was hard.
I was Snow White: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the loveliest of them all?” That was my daily thought as my mental fortitude crumbled. The digital spreadsheets that hung off every wall in the office would have to suffice. They displayed all of our risk positions and spewed out performance numbers second-by-second. It started to become my sanity versus the authorities’ lack of morality. I couldn’t believe these fuckers were going to get away with it and move on.
But then, just as suddenly, it happened.