In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, the author and former Salomon Brothers trader Michael Lewis wrote a defiant, indeed triumphant, article for The Guardian's Comment pages.
The piece, titled 'Financiers, Cry Freedom', advanced the notion of the City trader as a heroic figure and inspirational symbol: "Wall Street long ago ceased to be a place and became an idea.
You can't destroy an idea with a bomb.
You can't even dent it..." he wrote, "People who work in financial markets are not merely symbols but practitioners of liberty.
They do not suffer constraints on their private ambitions, and they work hard to free others from constraints.
This makes them, almost by default, the spiritual antithesis of the religious fundamentalist..."