[발췌] Former communications manager: 'There's so much the public don't get' (Sep 2013)

출처: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/joris-luyendijk-banking-blog/2013/sep/27/communications-manager-major-banks
지은이: Joris Luyendijk

※ 발췌 (excerpts):

( ... ... )

"How do we find out that bankers have spoken to the press without authorisation? There are external agencies that monitor the media for us. We flick through those. You can pay extra for summaries which is great because financial coverage can be ridiculously boring and time-consuming. Sometimes people in the bank send you stuff; look at this.

"Reputation is a bank's core asset. And there are regulatory issues about what we can and can't say. ( ... ... )

( ... ... )

"Quite a few journalists go to work for banks, that's true. Why? There's better pay, sure. But it's also because journalist have no idea what they're in for. Sometimes I would come across one who had gone over to our side and he'd have this shell-shocked look. The first six months they are like, what the fuck? They had no idea because bankers were always really, really nice to them.

"Some financial journalists can be a bit naive about how much they know. We are very careful to ensure our people are media trained so they only give journalists what they want to give. And the guys with really good intel won't speak to journalists in the first place. They won't even speak to me. They're are the ones who know where all the skeletons are.

"Then there are the business reporters from mainstream media. Sometimes I'd get calls from a reporter at a major paper or broadcaster asking a question that shows he doesn't have a clue. He wouldn't even now the difference between primary and secondary markets or flow or structured but he would want a chat on the state of the market. How can I work with that?

"UK mainstream media are so focused on the stock market. That's a fraction of the financial markets. Foreign currency trading alone is around $3tn a day. A day! Then there are bonds, both corporate and government, commodities, structured products ...

"Some journalist are in it for the fun. Get taken out for a flashy meal and free wine. The good ones prefer to meet in the bank. They want to be in a space where bankers feel comfortable, so they forget they're talking to a journalist.

"If I still worked for the bank we would not be having this conversation. ( ... ) There's so much the public don't get. Blaming everything on investment bankers, for instance. Maybe this is also confession, like a good Catholic."

다른 출처: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/joris-luyendijk-banking-blog/2013/sep/27/senior-bankers-pr-officer
지은이: Joris Luyendijk

※ 발췌(excerpts):

( ... .... ) But my favorite quote is about some journalists' understanding of the mentality in banks. Let's first see the scene. Senior bankers may be terrified of getting misquoted, the interviewee explains, but they love to see their name in the papers.

"Senior bankers become really nice to us just before and after they get promoted to the level where they are allowed to talked to the press. Suddenly they realise that we have the power to put them in front of journalists─authorisation to speak to journalists can be another status symbol."

One outcome is that when journalists meet senior bankers in the context of an authorised interview in the presence of a PR officer, those journalists may get to see a side of that banker that is, shall we say, slightly one-sided?

"Quite a few journalist go to work for banks, that's true. Why? There's better pay, sure. But it's also because journalist have no idea what they are in for. Sometimes I would come across one who had gone over to our side and he'd have this shell-shocked look. The first six months they are like, what the fuck? They had no idea because bankers were always really, really nice to them."

[발췌: Guardian] Bankers: an anthropological study (12 Sep 2011)

출처: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/14/bankers-anthropological-study-joris-luyendijk
지은이: Joris Luyendijk

... Guardian is launching a new projectL an anthropological study of the Square Mile


※ 발췌 (excerpts):


So what is a Dutch anthropologist doing talking to bankers in the City of London? That was certainly the first thing bankers themselves wanted to know before they would even consider meeting with me in secret.

Look, I'd tell them via email, everybody hates you. Do you hate yourself? No, you don't. Then why don't you tell me about your life, your ups and downs and what an average working day for you looks like? I'll work your words into a portrait of a banker as a human being, we'll anonymise it because you've probably signed a document saying you'll never speak to the press, and then we'll post on my Guardian blog. Who knows, when they read about you in your own words, people outsie the financial sector may change their minds about you─or at least come to a more nuanced and realistic view of what people like you are all about.

This was my pitch and most of the time it failed. Why should I invest my time to contribute to a better understanding of my sector, some bankers replied, when all outsiders want is a reason to hate us? Others politely indicated they didn't trust journalists or the Guardian. Or they didn't trust me; what ^is^ a Dutch anthropologist doing talking to bankers in the City of London?

Before I explain why, here are the words of one financial worker who did sit for self-portait, the first of 10 to do so. He is involved in mergers and acquisitions ( ... ) and explained that when a company is in the process of being sold, confidentiality is everything:

"This is one of the reasons we invent code names for deals. ( ... ... ) "

And here's a former M&A banker who agreed to meet:

'Let me tell you, the financial sector is not rocket science. ( ... ... ) It is an endurance game, in part."

Another banker who would talk but declined to sit for a portrait, compared his work to that of a GP: "You spend many hours memorising terms (body parts, diseases, treatments) and learning to recognise patterns. Then you put in very long hours and collect a nice salary, while employing your jargon to intimidate outsiders."

That's the sort of thing I've been talking to bankers about, and why I am beginning to be captivated by them. Beneath the layers of lingo there are subcultures and dress codes and ways of speech, their mutual stereotypes, conventions, taboos and of course jokes: "Every economist knows that there are three kinds of economists; there are those who know how to count, and there are those who don't."

It's quite a change for me, exploring bankers. I used to do anthropological fieldwork among students in the slums of Cairo, then worked as a Middle East correspondent going back and forth between Hamas leaders and Jewish settlers. The latter were people who knew they might die at any moment for their convictions, and had made their peace with that. Meanwhile those students lived off less than a dollar a day.

Compare this to the bankers and I have moved from freestyle boxing to billards. Then again, readers' responses may not be that different.

When I wrote about Israel and the Palestinians some readers would judge an article exclusively by whether it was likely to make one camp look good or the other. ( ... ) I expect the same thing with bankers.

The Middle East is a pretty intense place but unless you have family living or serving there, for most readers it is also a pretty far away place. Finance is not. If somebody told you your savings aren't safe, she'd have your full and immediate attention, wouldn't she? But if she then said the words "bank reform" many would have to suppress a yawn.

This is paradoxical. Finance directly affects everyone's interests, but many have a hard time maintaining their interest in it. But as the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the following three years have shown, the financial world is too important to leave to the bankers─in fact in some countries democracy is beginning to look like the system by which electorates decide which politicians gets to implement what the markets dictate. The people in this very powerful sector are worth learning more about. And the good news is, when you listen to them in their own words, that can actually be pretty entertaining. And humanising.

Now for the blog. Here's the idea. You have the internet and today's technology. You have the classic techniques of narrative journalism and anthropological fieldwork. And you have this enormously important yet devilishly complex thing called the world of finance.

What if you mix those? Is that a way to make the world of finance accessible to outsiders who are interested but can't find an entry point? ( ... ... ) Every interview will be posted on the web, with comment threads open to let other outsiders to ask questions and, who knows, to let insiders elaborate on the material. Over time I hope to build an intellectual candy shop full of interesting stuff about the world of finance, stuff that will then help you as a reader maker better sense of the news.

( ... ... )

The hours some of these people put it seem completely insane. Here's the PR officer for a brokerage firm.

"I get up around 4.30am. ( ... ... ) Most days I thrown in the towel around 6-6.30am. ( ... )."

Even after only a couple of dozen interviews, it seems fair to say that this is not a sector for whiners. The same PR officer, a veteran of four decades in the City, said this about the top bankers, the ones with the huge bonuses: "In the old days the caricature was of a fat man with a cigar in one hand and a glass of brandy in the other. In the current environment somebody like that wouldn't last a week."

The subtitle to the blog reads "going native in the world of finance". It's a nod to the risk that you identify too much with the people you are studying. That after a while in the jungle of Papua New Guinea, human sacrifice begins to look pretty reasonable. It is happening to me already, a little bit. I also remind myself there's a clear bias in my sample: would Gordon Gekko have made time for a Dutch anthropologist?

( ... ... )

As I said, it's a captivating world, and often all too human. This is what a lawyer said about dress codes in the City. ( ... ... )

On the blog you will find 10 self-portraits of financial workers. Hopefully more will follow soon. Let me say something nice about people in the financial world, to encourage them to defy their PR departments and come forward for a confidential interview.  ( ... ... )

The Joris Luyendijk Blog launches on Thursday at 11am.

( ... ... )
( ... ... )

[발췌] Macquarie economist Larry Hu's "China’s Debt: Myths and Realities" (Jun 8, 2016)

출처: https://twitter.com/gabewildau/status/747738402573811712

We estimate that China's debt burden is 245% of GDP as of end-2015, with three unique features: ... ...

Dic/ there goes something/somebody

a) used when you see someone or something going past or away from you.

• There goes a very worried man.

b) used to say that you can here something such as a bell ring.

• There goes the phone. I'll answer it.
• There you go, saying such things again.

c) used when you are losing something, for ex. an opportunity or money, as a result of something that has just happened.

• There go our chances of winning the championship.
• There goes my career.
• Well, there goes any hope that he'll call me again.

.... LDOCE and others

* * *

• ... We owed about $5000 in back taxes, and I was told that unless I paid the money, our house would be auctioned off. Not a good day for me. And shortly after my visit to City Hall, the house was sold for less than a half of its value. We took an incredible loss, but who would want a house that looked like a bunch of bandits and graffiti gurus lived there. For a moment I thought, ^There goes my entire life!^ My dad, my mom, and now the very house I was raised in were gone. ^What's next?^ I would ask myself. How could I get any worse? At sixteen, I was homeless, parentless, and hopeless. ... source

lyrics - Carpenters/ Long Ago

Long ago and oh so far away

I fell in love with you before the second show

Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear

But you're not really here

It's just the radio

(*) Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby

You said you'd be coming back this way again baby

Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do

Loneliness is a such a sad affair

And I can hardly wait to be with you again

What to say to make you come again

Come back to me again

And play your sad guitar

Repeat (*) twice

[발췌: BBC] The myth of the stiff upper lip (Apr 2016)

출처: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160408-is-the-stiff-upper-lip-a-myth

※ 발췌 (excerpt):

It's a commonly held belief─a cliché even: the British are a nation of repressed, emotionally stunted stoics. And the 'stiff upper lip'─remaining resolute and calm in the face of adversity─was arguably put to its greatest test during the WWII.

It's no more apparent than in Noel Coward and David Lean's wartime masterpiece of emotional restraint, Brief Encounter(1945), about a lonely housewife who falls in love with a stranger.

Alastair Sooke travels to Carnforth station─where Brief Encounter was filmed─to speak with Thomas Dixon, the author of Weeping Britannia.

Dixon explains why the film is "a central document of British emotions," driving audiences to tears just as the film's characters repress them. But does it dispel the idea of the stiff upper lip? Watch the video to find out.

* * *

CF. That British Stiff Upper Lip Exposed!
CF. Why Should I Keep a Stiff Upper Lip?
CF. [Books] Stiff upper lips: an English history of emotion
CF. The English Spirit - The Stiff Upper Lip

Dic/ Usages/ What do these 'it's' mean ...

I suppose the pronoun 'it' appearing in almost all these sentences, with some exceptions, is impersonal, and is used to indicate the situation described by the following clause.


I really appreciate it when you ... ─ source

• I appreciate it when you have time for me, so I don't feel rushed.
• I appreciate it when you acknowledge the time and effort it took for me to get here.
• I appreciate it when you help me understand.
• I appreciate it when you provide important information in writing.
• I appreciate it when you acknowledge and respect what I know about my child.
• I appreciate it when you acknowledge and respect what I have learned from others - even the Internet!
• I appreciate it when you give me unbiased information, and let me make an informed decision.
•  cf. It's very helpful when you clarify your role in the "big picture."

─ source 

I don't appreciate it when you're being mean to me. ─ source

The Longer you wait for something, the more you appreciate it when you get it. ─ source

I really appreciate it when people at least try to be understanding. ─ source

I appreciate it when rooms have hardwood floors and not carpet. ─ source

I appreciate it when I smile at another girl and she smiles back because it's like wow not all girls are spawns of satan.  ─ source

You have to experience the wrong kind of love, in order to appreciate it when it's right. ─ source

We really appreciate it when dancers come over to our place on the spur of the moment.  ─ source

I so much appreciate when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work. ─ source

Do waiters/waitresses appreciate it when patrons stack plates? Why or why not? ─ source

Players appreciate it when the game is well made. ─ source

...

And a sample sentence with some part of the paragraph in the current job, Swimming w sharks:

... ... We had talked about why many people seem to have so little interest in issues that directly affect their interests. It is 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 know nothing about─sustainable transport─and asked a beginner's 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.

Dic/ (예문) not only because ... not least because ...

1.

This explicitly lesbian concern is in marked contrast to the anxieties the dominant culture, as represented by the woman from the American Cancer Society's Reach for Recovery, imagines mastectomy survivors' experience. Wielding a pink "flesh colored" prosthesis, the woman's focus is on breast cancer survivors' appearance─"Her message was you are just as good as you were before because you can look exactly the same. ... 'Look at me,' she said. ... 'Now can you tell which is which?'" (1980, 42). Lorde rejects the prosthesis not only because it does not look the same (not least because of its racially inflected pinkness) but, more important, because "not even the most skillful prosthesis in the world could ...  feel the way my breast had felt, and either I would love my body one-one-breasted now, or remain forever alien to myself"

... Gendering Disability

2.

빛의 공포, 빛의 환희

여럿이 함께 묵는 단칸 방이다.

다들 어디로 서둘러 가는 분위기다.

어딘지 모를 그곳을 향해 나도 발을 재촉하는데,
현관 문을 보니 잠겨 있지 않아 잠그고 가야 한다고 말한다.
뒤에 따라올 사람들에게 열쇠를 맡기고 가면 그들이 잠그고 올 거라고 누가 말한다.
그러고 보니 다른 몇몇이 그 단칸 방으로 오길래 열쇠를 맡긴다.

서둘러 큰 계단을 내려가고, 이리로 저리로 길을 따라간다.
사람들이 여럿이고 아주 많은데 주변을 살필 겨를이 없다.

큰 광장이 보인다. 아니, 저것이 뭐지?

하늘에서 글자들이 떨어진다.

앞에 번호를 달고 1번 글귀가 이어지는 문장 하나가 천천히 내려오고,
또 2번 글귀가 이어지는 문장 하나가 천천히 내려오고, 계속 글귀가 내려온다.

자세히 보니 내가 살았던 삶의 이야기들이다.

탁 트인 광장 한 곳에서 빛이 퍼져 나온다.

저 빛을 쏘이면 뼈와 살이 타 버린다는 이야기가 들린다. 허공에서 들려오는 이야기 같기도 하고 주변의 누가 하는 이야기 같기도 하다.

순간의 공포가 스친다.

다가오는 빛을 봤다. 어떤 환한 이에게서 나오는 빛이다.
점점 그 빛이 커지며 천천히 다가온다.

그리로 달려간다. 다른 이들도 많이 달려간다.

드디어 그 빛의 세계로 들어가는 순간.
뼈와 살은 타지 않았다.
오히려 따사로운 품에 안긴 듯 아주 평온한 세계 속으로 들어온 환희와 안도가 찾아온다.

꿈에서 깨었다.

#꿈

[발췌] Language of anecdotes

자료: https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2014/11/05/there-i-was-minding-my-own-business-the-language-of-anecdotes/

※ 발췌 (excerpts):

... However, the phrases that we use to tell these stories are often quite similar. ... Of course, to start with, we need to introduce our anecdote, (which often relate to a topic that is already being discussed). To do this, we often use phrases such as these:

• Did I ever tell you about the time I invited Al's boss round for dinner?
• I'll never forget the time I got locked in a public toilet in Portland.
• That reminds me of the time I gave a talk to some children at my daughter's school.

To start telling the anecdote, we often 'set the scene' (describe the situation where something is about to happen). A very common way of doing this is to use the past continuous tense:

• So anyway, Sam and I were strolling through the park, chatting away as usual, when suddenly ... 

A phrase that you often hear at this 'scene-setting' point is There I was ... / There we were ...

• Anyway, there we were sitting in the bar, wondering what to do with ourselves when ...
• So there we were, completely lost, unable to speak the language and, to make matters worse, my phone had stopped working.

( ... ... )


CF. there I was/we were (macmillian dic): used when you are telling a story and you want to give a summary of the situation that you were in at a particular stage.

• So there I was, up to my waist in icy water.

CF. Expressions used when telling stories (macmillian dic)