“He was a portly, middle-aged figure in an ill-fitted suit, scuffed black shoes, and the sort of sagging thin black socks I came to recognize as a symbol of Britain’s long economic decline. There were other features incongruous with his station in life. Cowlicks standing high on the back of his head took on lives of their own; his clothes were as rumpled as if he had slept in them. He was the boss of an operation of several hundred people, and he looked like a bum or as if he had just awakened from a long nap.”
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Account of a British investment banker in the
1980s, from ‘Liar’s Poker’ by Michael Lewis.
For Michael Lewis, Britain’s long economic decline was exemplified
by the sagging black socks of a native merchant banker. To an earlier generation,
Britain’s ‘end of Empire’ moment came similarly not with a bang, but with a
whimper. British sovereign finances had been slowly and surely mauled by the
cost of two dreadful global wars, but we limped on until July 1956. Egypt’s
President Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and with our oil supplies at risk,
Britain sought aid from the IMF. The United States said ‘No’. Indeed the US,
Britain’s largest creditor, also threatened to sell some of its massive holdings
in UK government debt. Joining the fray, Saudi Arabia began an oil embargo
against Britain and France. Sensing an opportunity to increase its influence in
the Middle East at the expense of its faltering old ally, the US refused to
make up the shortfall in energy supplies unless Britain agreed to an immediate
military withdrawal from the region. The British Chancellor, Harold Macmillan,
warned the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, that our foreign exchange reserves
were running out. The country would soon be unable to feed itself. Britain
blinked first, and our days of Empire were over.
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