Just another day...(WARNING - contains a near-rant on matters pertaining to finance!!)

Was a relatively good day today...until the last minute when there was a 'minor' tiff with someone at work who decided something was my fault, even though it blatantly wasn't ! Guess it doesn't help that I am the junior-most member of my team - it gives people an excuse to pile the crap on me because they know they can't pile on someone else.

It's times like these I really hope my brain would keep a video of so that when I sit for a future interview, and am asked one of those inane questions that ask you for evidence of people skills, or for how you handled a difficult situation, I can rattle off without blinking an eye. Maybe I should start keeping a log of these moments in a spreadsheet - seriously !!

Anyway, on to something else completely different......

When I was walking to work this morning, actually, just as soon as I started crossing London Bridge , a completely random thought popped into my head (ok, maybe not so random, because it might have had something to do with the whole 'city' feel I get when I walk across the bridge!!) - does / can financial trading activity (i.e. trading of stocks, bonds, commodities, etc.) carried out by investment banks, hedge funds and so on, increase (or worse, decrease!) the stock of wealth in a nation?

I am sure academics / smarter people have considered this question and may even have an answer ! But I am not sure whether or not it does - in financial trading (be it speculative or non-speculative), do the gains of party A to a trade imply equal losses for party B? Intuitively, I would say yes, which would imply that the economy is no better or worse off. However, as is evidenced by the current recession and near financial collapse, speculative trading can indeed decrease the wealth of a nation if the loss-making party to a trade is so systemically involved in an economy's flow of credit and lending that it's collapse would effectivley destroy those companies (auto-makers, retailers, etc.) who rely on that flow of credit.