Bank Shame Is Averted by Pushing Kids Into Piracy: Mark Gilbert

Commentary by Mark Gilbert

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- It’s the conversation every parent dreads. “Mom, dad, you know how I’ve always been a little different from the other kids? Well, I think it’s time you knew the truth. I think I’m, um, an investment banker!”

So how do you stop the fruit of your loins, the inheritors of your estate, the bearers of your lineage, from making a huge lifestyle mistake and bringing shame on your name? Here are some alternative professions you should consider steering your offspring toward in order to avoid the stigma of having a finance professional in the family.

A Pirate’s Life for Me!

There’s no parrot, eye patch, tricorn hat or peg leg these days. You do, however, get your own AK-47 rifle. In recent weeks, piracy has become the highest-profile profession in the world. Shiver me timbers!

To be sure, hijacking supertankers was a lot more lucrative when oil was trading at more than $140 a barrel, compared with its current value of about $50. The past year’s 90 percent decline in the Baltic Dry Index, a measure of the cost of shipping commodities around the world, suggests ship owners aren’t earning enough money to buy the kind of armed protection that might make a pirate’s life more difficult.

No wonder hijackings by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden region have tripled, with more than 581 crew members taken hostage in the year to September, up from 172 in all of 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

In truth, growing up to be Captain Jack Sparrow isn’t that different from a career in finance, based on the lyrics of a song made famous by Walt Disney Co.: “We extort, we pilfer, we filch and sack, drink up, me hearties, yo ho! Maraud and embezzle and even hijack, drink up, me hearties, yo ho!”

Close Enough for Government Work

Nobody goes into investment banking because they love photocopying, enjoy working through the night fueled only by pizza and diet soda, or get a kick out of cold-calling investors begging them to buy the latest whiz-bang derivative.

There were only ever two reasons to endure finance’s abusive working conditions: filthy lucre, and a Darwinist hope that you might one day rise to become chief executive officer.

The first reason has disappeared in a puff of writedowns and bailouts. Bonus is a dirty word. The days when the ability to say “this AAA rated collateralized debt obligation is priced at par” with a straight face was enough to earn you a Bentley- buying payout are over for the foreseeable future.

These days, inching your way up the greasy pole of management isn’t the best way to achieve seniority at an investment bank. Instead, a career in the civil service beckons as the fast-track to becoming the person who calls the shots. Heck, half of the world’s finance professionals are already working for the government, while the other half can barely write a trading ticket without permission.

Whirlybird Flyer

“Quantitative easing” is the new black, with the U.S. Treasury throwing cash at the recession as fast as the printing presses can engrave bills. The likely next action from the policy-making playbook, after the Federal Reserve interest rate drops to zero, is direct purchases of U.S. government debt.

In his November 2002 speech about “Deflation: Making Sure ‘It’ Doesn’t Happen Here,” Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke referred to the possibility that the central bank might “begin announcing explicit ceilings for yields on longer-maturity Treasury debt, say, bonds maturing within the next two years.”

That speech prompted the moniker “Helicopter Ben,” referring to Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman’s phrase about helicopters dropping money into the economy. Pay for your daughter’s flying lessons now, and that pilot’s license could get her a job at the Fed in the not-too-distant future.

Keep the Faith

“The development of economic systems which concentrate on the common good depends on a determinate ethical system. The decline of such discipline can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse. We need a maximum of specialized economic understanding, but also a maximum of ethos so that specialized economic understanding may enter the service of the right goals.”

Was that U.S. President-elect Barack Obama? Maybe World Bank President Robert Zoellick? Perhaps International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn? Or United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon? In fact, the guy with his finger on the financial pulse was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in a 1985 paper titled “Market Economy and Ethics.” Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005.

So maybe you should be guiding your firstborn toward the priesthood, especially in these economically challenged times. As the pope said last month, “Money vanishes, it is nothing; the only solid reality is the word of God.”

Choo-Choo

Cars are individualistic, bad for the environment and increasingly frustrating in a gridlocked world -- all SO 20th century. With Obama as U.S. president and governments in Europe rediscovering their socialist principles, improved public transport will soon be back on the agenda. Remember when every small boy wanted to be a train driver?

(Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Mark Gilbert in London at magilbert@bloomberg.net