#12. Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Tuesday, June 18, 2019)
What was your best day…of resolving a deep insecurity?
Of all the seemingly-mild psychological conditions out there, insecurity is the one of that’s probably the most overlooked in terms of how much it can derail the life of an otherwise happy, successful person.
And for me, during that five-year span between when I moved back home in 2014 to take that economist job, to this rainy day in downtown Manhattan, there was an insecurity – small at first – that had gradually ballooned to almost-unmanageable proportions.
In short, it came down to this: I was working and living in: (1) my hometown; which was also (2) a small, boring city only on the periphery of the financial universe1. And by virtue of that alone, I let myself believe2 that my worth as a person was categorically worse than everybody else. (Despite my pay, the profile of my institution, and the type of work I did suggesting otherwise.)
That week in June, I was going to be attending the two-day Goldman Sachs Capital Markets Conference in Manhattan (#58) on Wednesday and Thursday. And while planning the trip, I got the idea to also visit an acquaintance at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY)3, Laura Stuart, who I had met last October at the Seventh Public Investors Conference in Rome (#50) for reserve managers. She was the director of the group that worked in same foreign reserves area as my group did; but we never actually dealt with them in our course of business, so I thought it would be useful to have a little information exchange with her and her group.
Of course, thanks to the aforementioned insecurity, even taking the initiative to suggest a meeting like that, with someone in New York no less, felt like a big deal (that made me really nervous). I should also note that in my policy sphere, it wasn’t typical for a relatively junior economist like me to arrange something like this himself, so doing this was already an unconventional step.
But my senior colleague and close confidant Aaron Brookbank (#15) helped me through it (and I got my director’s approval), and I sent the e-mail to Laura. We had some back-and-forth on timing and topics to discuss, and everything seemed to be set for Tuesday – though there remained one final administrative detail I thought needed to be sorted out. Then for the week leading up to the trip Laura never replied. The insecurity came back again. Was the visit off?
Then, Monday afternoon, just hours before my flight to Newark, I get the confirmation from Laura. Her and her group are excited for the visit at ten tomorrow, and so I’m excited. I spend the flight and that night in my Lower East Side hotel room meticulously reviewing my content for the discussion, and the questions I’ll be asking.
Tuesday morning, I take the A-line to Fulton Street station, then navigate through the narrow roads to the visitor’s entrance at Maiden Lane – where a security guard immediately confronts me in a suspicious sort of way. After several minutes of me explaining that I’m here to see Laura, and some more minutes of waiting, they let me in. I go through the multi-stage X-ray check-ins, then an admin takes me up to the 13th floor.
For the first time ever, I’m in a New York office – on business. And just being in the building and seeing the meeting rooms and offices around me – even if they look exactly like the rooms and offices in my institution – gives me this real unreal feeling. The floor’s all empty now because of a fire drill, so I just get led into the big boardroom where they start setting up the video monitor because they’ve got a group from the Chicago Fed office also calling in. Oh wow, this really is legit for them.
Fifteen minutes later, Laura and several of her colleagues come in. We all introduce. Between the ten or so here in total, they’ve got people from all the different functions – the policy, the quants, the traders – all here, to talk with me about foreign reserves. And in that moment, this immense positive feeling comes over me. Contrary to that vision I had built up over all these years, I haven’t just settled into some lower-tier life. The knowledge and experience and institution that I represent – it is important to the wider world. And not only that, I set this whole thing up by my own initiative, and I’m here representing my institution all on my own without anybody else present (unlike #19).
The hour-and-a-half meeting goes really, really well. We do this all as a totally informal open-ended conversation, with a question from me leading to a detailed description of their business with personal opinions thrown in, which leads to a broader conversation of that topic as a whole, which after some time then naturally segways to another topic, and so on (LIBOR is a big topic, as expected, #78). And throughout this, I realize that I am serving as the one information source on my particular topic – to one of the world’s most important financial institutions. At the same time, I am, both on and off the record, learning some very enlightening things about the Fed and their reserves function that not many in the wider industry would get to know.
And with that, I step back out into the lower Manhattan streets with a whole new perspective on my life.
- Unlike cities such as New York, Chicago, or Toronto.
- Assisted by the regular sentiment from my parents that, essentially: “This location was perfect for me, because it allowed me to concentrate on the important things in life like finding a girlfriend and starting a family (#61); and it’s not like I had that much potential anyways.”
- In case you don’t know, the FRBNY, as part of the overall Fed system, is an institution whose purpose is to set policy alongside the government – rather than make a ton of money like J.P. Morgan or Goldman Sachs.