Normally, this blog focuses on insights into very detailed post-trade operational and IT management issues that are key to what you do every day. I try to focus on what’s useful to you and I hope that I have succeeded in the past. For this post, I will take a detour and focus on what happened in Boston this week.
Maybe like some of you, I have connections to Boston. I moved there in 1986 to revive my sagging journalism career after several years of trying to find work in Pennsylvania where I’m from. I was very lucky when I moved to Boston in the go-go eighties. I had the support of family and friends and Reaganomics and Dukakis had finally revitalized the Bay State. In a month, I got a job with a business magazine covering the North Shore and the city of Boston.
It was a crazy, early career job where you’re doing everything—driving everywhere, writing, proofing galleys, running to a press conference, learning about auto dealerships in the North Shore, real estate in the city of Boston, and mostly how Boston really works.
I quickly learned that Boston is not a hotbed of hippy-dippy, drugged-out elitist liberals deciding the fate of the world or dropping out. True, there are many great liberal thinkers and passionate conservatives in the hallowed halls and bars of Cambridge, Braintree, City Hall, the Back Bay, Jamaica Plain, Dorchester Lower Mills, and East Boston. But I learned that most Bostonians are practical, intellectually honest and compassionate people. They gave a naïve journalist trying to make it against the odds a chance—I will never forget that and I will always treasure that.
Also because of Boston I stumbled my way into covering this weird thing call information technology and a company known as Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). I also started learning more about the trading of stocks and bonds just in time for the crash of October 1987. It was the start of a long journey to where I am now.
To say the least, Boston was very good to me. So I was profoundly upset when a friend called to tell me about the bombs that went off at the Boston Marathon. My heart sank as I thought about my Boston relatives, friends, business acquaintances and even those who had served as sources for stories then and now. I am still reaching out to them to make sure they’re all right.
I cannot ask FTF News to print the language I would use to describe the depth of my anger toward those cowards who committed these murders and permanent injuries to innocent bystanders and runners. However, I think you can fill in the blanks.
Talking head pundits will help us derive lessons from this attack although most Bostonians and most people would say that we have to double down on security as this kind of terrorism is global and unending. Most banks and other financial services firms already have security and disaster recovery/business continuity plans in place. Most likely they are reviewing and enhancing those plans now especially when the worst can and probably will happen.
In the days ahead, we are likely to learn a lot more about the vermin behind this horrific attack. Cracking this case will be the result of rigorous persistence, intelligence, maybe a little luck, and a deeply rooted tradition of providing justice when it is sorely needed—all things that define Boston and all of its good citizens.
Need a Reprint?
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