Introduction

In 2008 I embarked on an unusual experiment in gonzo urban anthropology. I left the world of radical left-wing academia, and went to London with two goals in mind. Goal one: To break into the financial sector at the heart of one of the most powerful centres of the global economy and to see first-hand how it worked, to learn by doing, not by reading. Goal two: To shatter the complacent intellectual comfort zone I’d found myself in, and to learn to move in and out of different worlds like a chameleon. It was an exercise in critical thought, backed by real action.

ADVANCED TIE SKILLZ

That’s how I found myself on the 36th floor of the Lehman Brothers offices in Canary Wharf, four weeks before the company collapsed, and how I found myself in the subsequent financial crisis, trying to pitch esoteric inflation derivatives, property derivatives, and longevity derivatives, aboard a mad raft with an oddball crew of old rogues and young rats, fighting against the odds to stay afloat. It’s a pretty interesting story, and I hope to tell it some time.

In the mean time, I’m completely broke, in a room in Brixton, with a pile of business cards and a stack of ideas, most of which don’t add up. Sometimes I help unusual people to get to grips with conceptually challenging things, like what the financial system might be. I look at how financial concepts might be channeled creatively, through the fledgling world of social and environmental finance, and consider why all this might matter in issues of social and environmental justice.

Sometimes I look at bizarre curiosities, like new currencies and new units of time, Islamic finance, Hawala systems and financial crime. I delve into the way the financial sector tries to reconcile our views of the future in the present.

Sometimes I hang out with people who call themselves anarchists, but who are mostly just concerned about a world they perceive as offering them nothing but bland complacency and treadmill materialism. They hack conventions and set up bases in old abandoned buildings, but are still daunted by the seemingly intractable, impenetrable and arcane financial structures around them. I urge them to try engage more, to spend less time throwing rocks at things, and more time subverting their own preconceptions. They look at me weirdly, but I think there’s a lot to be said for a new activist philosophy.

I play a lot of guitar. I once busked on the New York Underground. I have a pricing model on my hardrive that can tell you what rate to charge for a bet on how long people live for. I lifted it from an investment bank, and one day, when I learn to use it, I'm going to create a rock 'n roll financial opera.

I once went to a fancy university, got an MPhil in Development Studies, wrote some papers. Sometimes I hang out with development people and talk trade policy, agricultural subsidies, and NGOs. Other times I hang out with finance peeps, and talk about things like sugar and carbon.