What exactly is a “banker” these days? How do you define a “soldier”? On the face of it, these two questions have little in common; after all, Afghanistan is a world away from a Wall Street trading floor, both in geography and pay.
But for a few hours last week, I learnt to my surprise that these two worlds have more in common than it might seem, and the trigger for that was a serendipitous little saga that ties together the unlikely combination of Gerry Corrigan (former New York Fed governor), George Soros (philanthropist-cum-hedge fund player) and Andy Salmon (former commander of the British Royal Marines).
The starting-point for this story was the brand new, cavernous headquarters of Goldman Sachs. This opened recently near the former site of the World Trade Center, and last week I visited it to meet with Corrigan, the former central banker who is now working as a senior adviser at Goldman.