Meet the foul-mouthed, Left-wing, working-class ex-City trader called Gary who's winning tens of thousands of YouTube followers by claiming HE has the formula for a fairer economy
As he tells it, the story of Gary Stevenson, a foul-mouthed, Left-wing, working-class geezer and self-styled YouTube economics guru is a tale worthy of a modern-day Charles Dickens. The 37-year-old socialist, who claims to have the formula for a fairer economy, says he made so much money in the City that he never needs to work again.
He also claims to dispense his economic wisdom for free – though his recent best-selling memoir, to be found on coffee tables all over trendy Islington, is said to have earned a six-figure advance.
There is no charge for his YouTube channel Garyseconomics, which has 229,000 subscribers, and in which he shares his assessment of the economy.
'I'm not here because I'm a good person, I'm here because I'm a good f**king economist and I don't want this f**king country I grew up in to go down the f**king toilet,' he rants, in an observation typical of his oeuvre.
It's hardly John Maynard Keynes. But Stevenson, who often sports a bobble hat and a scarf, is convinced that he is right, while other, more respected, academic figures are woefully wrong. He is forecasting, for instance, that unless politicians address wealth inequality and the lack of affordable housing, many members of the middle class will collapse into poverty.
Gary Stevenson grew up in poverty in the shadow of Canary Wharf
So he is calling for a wealth tax, or for rules forcing the rich to spend more, which would mean they would pay more VAT.
But his views have received criticism for being too simplistic, lacking nuance and not being fully developed.
Part of his appeal to his young and gullible following on YouTube, who lap up his dubious pearls of economic wisdom, is his impeccable working class pedigree.
According to Stevenson, he achieved wealth through his own naked ability.
His childhood, in Ilford, East London, was so tough, he claims, that there were times when he had barely any clothes apart from his school uniform.
Compact, shaven-headed and gym-toned, Stevenson is the son of a postman who revels in his Artful Dodger-like persona.
He grew up in a terrace house with a railway line running past the back yard – but crucially, within sight of the vast wealth of the City.
'We were poor. But being in East London we could see Canary Wharf skyscrapers lit up at night. It was on our turf, it felt like it could be ours.'
He was expelled from Ilford County High School at 15 for dealing drugs – offloading £3 worth of cannabis to a classmate – and could easily have gone on a downward path. But instead Stevenson's life took an unexpected turn.
Thanks to his super-sharp brain, he won a university place at the London School of Economics, despite his expulsion from grammar school.
From there he went to a trading desk at Citibank, where he made obscene amounts of money, very fast.
In his rip-roaring memoir, The Trading Game, Stevenson paints a vivid picture of traders taking cocaine and representing just about everything that is wrong with the capitalist system. On his first day at Citibank, at the beginning of the global financial crisis of 2008, Stevenson did not arrive suited and booted but wearing a tracksuit with a rhino logo and Leyton Orient Football Club socks. Raised as a Mormon by his parents, he began to question the religion's teachings. He has subsequently admitted to scepticism about everything except his own intellect.
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Far from being overawed due to his humble origins, at Citi he viewed the economists and posh bankers who ruled the roost with supreme contempt.
'Rich people expect poor people to be stupid,' he says. 'The poshest kids from the poshest schools in the nicest suits – I decided I'd show 'em we're not all stupid, us kids in tracksuits.' In early 2009, during his first year as a trader, he earned a bonus of £13,000.
A year later, aged just 23, he'd got it up to £395,000. After that he earned unspecified millions.
By 2011, he says that he had become the bank's most successful trader – indeed the world's best trader. Former colleagues dispute this.
Kent Bray, a former colleague of Stevenson at Citi, says: 'Gary was a good trader, but he wasn't the best. He didn't do it for long enough.'
But despite the money, he was not happy.
One reason, he says, is that the so-called experts he was working alongside were very poor at their core responsibility of forecasting the next moves in interest rates.
Stevenson believes he can see what other economists can't.
Unlike his public school-educated rivals, he believes his background means he has a foot in the real world. After the financial crisis, most economists assumed consumer confidence and spending would soon soar again.
Stevenson, however, describes how he went back to Ilford and saw friends struggling to pay their mortgages.
So he bet against a recovery and, he claims, made a fortune.
A recent post on X (formerly Twitter), where he has 67,400 followers, reeks of disdain.
'Statistics are important, but having studied economics for 20 years, I know a good economist can generally rustle up a statistic supporting anything,' he says.
And, unlike some of his womanising colleagues, Stevenson never embraced the high life, unable to fully turn his back on his Mormon upbringing.
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Rather than Porsches and Rolexes, he bought a flat (but no furniture) and a bike on which he rode to work before sunrise.
His experience at Citi, he says, persuaded him that there were fundamental flaws in the economy and society. The low interest rate policies put in place following the global financial crisis, he argues, enabled the rich to get richer by buying stocks and shares and larger houses. The poor, in turn, got poorer.
'I think the history of modern economics of the last 15 years is basically terminal cancer being misdiagnosed as a series of seasonal colds,' he says.
Trading, says Stevenson, gives him an insight into how the world works.
'For me, trading is like looking at the weather forecast. To stop trading would be like to stop watching the news. Like it's the only way that I know. It's like the world reveals itself.'
Stevenson burned out and left Citi at the age of 27, having made enough, he claims, not to have to earn money again.
He enrolled for a DPhil at Oxford University, but by his own account became disillusioned.
Not everyone is as convinced by Stevenson's brilliance as he is.
Some online critics describe his views as 'immature' while others accuse him of wanting to pull up the ladder on other working-class kids with ambitions of making it in the City.
His YouTube posts are certainly provocative, with titles such as: 'why growth is stupid' and 'the illusion of improvement.'
Eye-catching they may be, but they add little to the serious debate of how to improve ordinary people's lives.
And there is certainly a contradiction in him turning so savagely on the City, when it was his own escape route, giving him the luxury of expounding his views.
Former colleague Kent Bray adds: 'Gary makes everyone he worked with at Citi seem amoral. In fact a lot of us have sympathy for his calls for a wealth tax, but we question how it could be implemented and whether the banking industry is the main problem.
'He never mentions that 50 per cent of everything you earn in banking today goes to the Government in tax. I'm grateful for my time in banking. It's hurtful to those of us who tried to help him.'
Although Stevenson is hugely critical of capitalism, it is interesting to note that he believes the prices of gold, houses and shares will continue to rise. He professes not to hate the rich, being rich himself.
At least he urges his fan base to stay away from cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
And you can expect to hear a lot more of him. Although a hero to many Labour voters, he is putting Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves on notice, that he will be criticising them if they take power.
