Self-perpetuating autocracy

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For all its delusions of fairness, enlightenment, openness to challenge and new ideas, employee surveys and so on, do not believe that your employer — if it has any significance in the financial services industry — is anything other than an oppressive Marxist regime. Supply, demand, freedom of expression, fairness, democracy, transparency — these are accoutrements of an anarcho-syndicalist commune. Investment banks like to believe they have these qualities — they certainly hold them dear — but this is a famous misconception. The nearest account to the inner workings of an investment bank you're likely to see - albeit without out the sex, however joyless and mechanical its depiction may be — is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.