Monday, March 26, 2007

The trading room

The first time I walked past it I stopped in my tracks. 'That room is awesome,' I said out loud.

My colleague beside me hummed nonchalantly in concurrence (he's been here a while, so he's part of the in-crowd already). I didn't know it would be there, although in hindsight of course the global headquarters of large bank would have a trading room the size of an airplane hanger.

It sits in the belly of the compound, occupying a huge chunk of the five-storey structure that joins the towers into one complete, money-making beast. From where I park my bicycle every morning underneath the east tower, I make my way west by passing along a hallway that overlooks the trading room.

Broad windows provide a panoramic view. The glass is tinted to deter photography; a discreet but clearly posted sticker of a crossed-out camera further sends the message home. I guess I won't be bringing my medium format rig to work anytime soon.

The room is nothing but row after row of workstations panelled with four or five monitors each. On one wall, a big LED panel shows a feed of the latest commodity prices, and on the far wall, an enormous, multi-coloured, glowingly back-lit map of the world reminds everyone, I guess, that world domination is the name of the game. The effect, seeing the banks of monitors lined one after another, is the inescapable feeling that the people down there must know what is going on everywhere in the world, all of the time. If the Illuminati still exist, surely they are the occupants of this very room. There's no running around and screaming like on the Wall Street floor. Everyone is very calm and quiet as they go about buying low and selling high everything the world has to offer.

I have a shaky personal relationship with capitalism. My schoolboy days were full of enthusiasm for the revolutionary approach to destroying the world as we know it. This has mellowed over time, rather like a good malt whisky, to an appreciation of the finer things that prosperity can bring. Do we have any better way to live than the one global capital provides? Is there really a more enlightened path to follow?

While I would never agree that greed is good, I've seen enough markets - from gleaming air conditioned malls to remote highland stations two-days walk from anywhere - to feel pretty comfortable with the basic principle they all share: buy low and sell high. Not quite a commandment, but definitely a hallmark of the human condition.

Anyway, whatever my conflicted thoughts on the matter are, it's irrelevant given my current view from the walkway between the towers. From here, there's no doubt about it - the trading room is a sight to behold.

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