The Man who puts Gold in Sacks

We interrupt the Show Trial of Goldman Sachs with this Special Announcement:

Sherman McCoy, a bond trader, heads into his office. The lobby is decorated in a faux English style with trappings so ornate “you could feel the expense in the tips of your fingers by just looking at them.” Immediately on leaving the reception area, Sherman hears “an ungodly roar, like the roar of a mob” and sees the sight of the trading floor: “The writhing silhouettes were the arms and torsos of young men, few of them older than forty. They had their suit jackets off. They were moving about in an agitated manner and sweating early in the morning and shouting, which created the roar. It was the sound of well educated young white men baying for money on the bond market.” Sherman heads for this sight “with relish.” He was, after all, one of the “Masters of the Universe.”

“Masters of the Universe! The roar filled Sherman’s soul with hope, confidence, esprit de corps, and righteousness. Yes, righteousness! Judy understood none of this, did she? None of it. Oh, he noticed her eyes glazing over when he talked about it. Moving the lever that moves the world was what he was doing—and all she wanted to know was why he never made it home for dinner. When he did make it home for dinner, what did she want to talk about? Her precious interior-decorating business and how she had gotten their apartment into Architectural Digest, which, frankly, to a true Wall Streeter was [an] embarrassment. Did she commend him for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that made her decorating and her lunches and whatever […] else she did possible? No, she did not. She took it for granted…and so forth and so on. Within ninety seconds, emboldened by the mighty roar of the bond trading room of Pierce & Pierce, Sherman managed to work up a good righteous head of resentment against this woman who had dared make him feel guilty.”

That's from Tom Wolfe's description of Wall Street in The Bonfire of the Vanities, published in 1987--yes, 1987. Here we are, a quarter-century later and we are Shocked (Shocked!) to discover there is Gambling (Gambling!) going on in Wall Street Investment Banks. Who knew?

And, by the way, The Bonfire of the Vanities may be the best book about Wall Street ever published.