Gary Stevenson, City trader turned campaigner: ‘I made money betting on a disaster’

theguardian.com:

Gary Stevenson became a multimillionaire by “betting inequality was going to destroy our economy and make the poorest in society even poorer”.

Growing up with his brother and sister in a cramped two-bed terrace backing on to a railway line in Ilford, east London, Stevenson, 35, had always wanted to make a lot of money. “I was a clever, poor, ambitious kid, who just didn’t want to be poor any more.”

He achieved his goal by the age of 22, getting a job as a trader at Citigroup in Canary Wharf in 2008. Within two years he had made his first million. His pay and bonuses continued rising as his bets – that interest rates wouldn’t rise and the inequality gap would widen – made tens of millions for the bank.

Then he quit. “I was making more money than I could ever imagine,” Stevenson says from his flat in Limehouse, overlooking the Citi tower he once worked in. “But it wasn’t right.”

He adds: “I made the money by betting on what is a fucking disaster, right? I bet on the long-term, continual collapse of the global economy. No fucking joke, right? You know, people will die because of that. Families’ lives will be ruined, and it will get worse and worse and worse.

“Look at what is happening right now with the cost of living crisis. In the winter, half of this country will not be able to afford to turn the heating on.”

However, Stevenson didn’t just walk away from his old job. He is now working to fight the system he previously worked in, campaigning to raise awareness among the wider population about what bankers like him are doing in the gleaming towers of Canary Wharf and the City of London to “continue to make the economy unfair”.

“The only way to change the system is to make the people really fucking angry about it,” he says as we