Joris Luyendijk - Swimming With Sharks: My Journey into the World of the Bankers

My Journey into the World of Bankers

JORIS LUYENDIJK

Youre on a plane. The seatbelt signs have been switched off, youve just been given your drink and now youre trying to decide between the in-flight entertainment and your book. The man next to you is quietly sipping his whiskey, while you gaze absently through the window at the sun and the clouds. Suddenly you see a gigantic flash of fire coming out of one of the engines. You call the flight attendant. Yes, she says, there were some technical difficulties but its all under control. She looks so composed and confident that you almost believe her. But you get up, unable to contain your alarm. First the relaxed flight attendant and then an officious cabin manager try to stop you as you make your way towards the front of the plane. Sir, please go back to your seat. You push them aside, grab the cockpit door, manage to open it and there is nobody there.

Over the past few years I have spoken to around 200 people who work or have recently worked in the financial district of London. Their stories are very different but if I were to summarise them in one image, it would be that empty cockpit.

This project started on a beautifully sunny day in May 2011 when Alan Rusbridger, then editor of the Guardian, invited me to his charmingly chaotic office opposite St Pancras International station in London. I had first met Rusbridger at a journalism conference in my home city of Amsterdam. We had talked about why many people seem to have so little interest in issues that directly affect their interests. Is it indifference and apathy, or have many subjects simply become too complicated for outsiders to understand? To find out, I had launched an experiment for a Dutch newspaper. I had taken an important, complicated and apparently boring issue that I knew nothing about sustainable transport and asked a beginners question: are electric cars a good idea? I had put this to an insider, whose answers led to new questions, which prompted interviews with other insiders and so on until a sort of learning curve of articles and stories had come about. Insiders were happy to make time while readers seemed to appreciate it when you started from zero.

Rusbridger had listened to all this with typically English politeness. I thought nothing more of it until months later I found myself in his sunlit office and he asked if I wanted to do such a learning curve for the Guardian. Only not about electric cars. He pointed in the direction of the City and said that we were literally a stones throw away from the place that only a few years ago had seen the biggest financial panic since the 1930s. Billions and billions had been spent to bail out the industry yet nobody had gone to prison. Indeed, a few years on, the City seemed to be behaving more and more as if it were business as usual again. So, how about a blog on the financial sector?

Behind him I could see the Regents Canal glittering in the spring sunshine and a Eurostar train speeding towards Brussels or Paris. Alongside the New York Times, the Guardian is the biggest online quality newspaper in the world. Insiders would surely make time for such a prestigious newspaper, wouldnt they? I understood as little of the world of finance as the average reader and this was a perfect example of an issue with a huge gap between the public interest and the interest of the public. Tell someone their money is not safe and you have their full attention; say the words financial reforms and people switch off.

I eagerly assented, thanking Rusbridger for the opportunity. How was I supposed to know that the English use that stiff upper lip of theirs to suppress enthusiasm as well as negative emotions?

So thats how a Dutch journalist with five years experience in the Middle East and a degree in anthropology ended up in the City on an unusual investigation: Tintin among the bankers.