Why Aren't They Shouting? ─ A Banker's Tale of Change, Computers and Perpetual Crisis

When Kevin Rodgers embarked on his career in finance, dealing rooms were seething with clamoring traders and gesticulating salesmen. Nearly three decades later, the feverish bustle has gone and the loudest noise you’re likely to hear is the gentle tapping of keyboards. Here is a very personal, often wryly amusing chronicle of this silent revolution that takes us from the days of phone calls, hand signals and alpha males to a world of microwave communications, complex derivatives and computer geeks. In addition, it’s a masterclass in how modern banking works, for those who don’t know their spot FX from their VaR or who struggle to recall precisely how Monte Carlo pricing operates. But it’s also an account of 30 years of seismic change that raises a deeply worrying question: Could it be that the technology that has transformed banking—and that continues to do so—is actually making it ever more unstable?

Kevin Rodgers was a trader with Merrill Lynch before joining another U.S. bank, Bankers Trust. From there he went on to work as a managing director of Deutsche Bank for 15 years and latterly as global head of foreign exchange.