The lies we (don't) tell....Honestly.

A good few years ago, when working for a "proper" American Bank in London, I shared a thought with a friend and fellow trader about another fellow trader who used to get right on my wick. Despite being an outwardly friendly chap and absolutely great value in the pub (and during Spot Desk wind-ups, more of which I will cover on a later post), I asserted that in my opinion this particular individual had the unfortunate condition of being a pa-tho-lo-gi-cal liar.

I had to emphasise the pathological element there because he really did have what appeared to be a mental condition in this regard. He just could not help himself and literally turned himself inside out to avoid the truth if there was the remotest possibility it could lead to him looking :
a) mildly culpable for a **** up, or
b) even worse ...being a bit of a sillybilly. Not even a full blown a***hole.

Over the smallest things, he would spin a yarn so convoluted and so unbelievable that it obviously belonged in the toilet, so we often just made fun of him openly about it.
My problem was simply that, where you need to trust and rely upon each other in a stressful team environment with money literally swirling around the business all of the time, lying to each other about irrelevant stuff sets a terrible precedent for when it actually matters.

Spot FX trading is very fast paced and stressful some of the time, and is generally considered a pretty ruthless and brutal business by most people in the Capital Markets world. This means that from time to time the collective team spirit needed to get out of (occasionally self-dug it must be admitted) deep financial holes is more important than the sum of the individual efforts being made. People shout at, direct, support and cajole each other in clipped and efficient tones until the "problem" has been traded away (or until the big boss marches out of his office and turns all of your screens off. At which point your team spirit is improved by taking it in turns to pummel him whilst you switch them back on again).

This process begins to fall apart when one out of the, say, six guys in this sh!tty position starts to lie about his role in the "exit effort", and eventually this effects the bottom line of the team (and therefore everybody's remuneration).

As a banking related and topical aside.... I guess half of the sub-prime crisis could probably have been averted had some structurers and accounting types in NY not lied to themselves and their superiors (who in turn lied to their own better nature and logic processes about this "free money" that was pouring in... just so long as it resulted in a bigger house in the Hamptons).

Where was I? Ah yes, getting properly miffed about people that lie and how darn unpleasant and unhelpful it is.

Today, my three and a half year old daughter steadfastly refused to do what I asked her very nicely to do. I asked so nicely, and it was such an irrelevant thing, that it took me several minutes this evening to recall what the darn question was!
"Can you take your dirty socks off please?" - such a tough bugger on the kids me. Oh and excuse the darn question pun, I couldn't resist it...

Anyway, after a couple of idle responses and general wiffle waffle, I posed something like "would you like to go and play with such-and-such?".
Said such-thing is a favourite toy and this question therefore obviously got a fervent "Yeh yeh yeeeh".
Progress here, thought I. Time to now masterfully complete the oft-employed bribe-your-child-to-do-what-you-want-using cheap-reward-tricks routine here.
"Ok, how about you take your socks off, then you can play with such-and-such". After the briefest of pauses she slumped back into her seat and said "Errrm. No!".

Without stopping to consider the perils of being a lying bugger I quipped "Fine, you suit yourself".

What a liar!

Clearly, what I meant to say was "Please stop behaving like this and just do what I want. I do NOT want you to choose what happens next, you are NOT really meant to suit yourself about this sock issue, and I am just trying to kid you into believing you CAN choose so that you actually do what I want and forget about what YOU want."
I may have lied, but the socks were off within 5 seconds.

Maybe Fred was onto something after all....