Goldman Sachs was the latest Wall Street bank to jump on low volatility. Despite an enormous gain in prop trading, most of the rest of the firm’s results were moving in the wrong direction. In its market making segment, for example, the firm booked $2.1 billion in net revenue in the third quarter, 22% less than what it took in during Q3 2016.

In FICC, the comparison was even worse:

Net revenues in Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities Client Execution were $1.45 billion for the third quarter of 2017, 26% lower than the third quarter of 2016, due to significantly lower net revenues in commodities, interest rate products and credit products and lower net revenues in currencies, partially offset by higher net revenues in mortgages. Although market-making conditions improved in most businesses compared with the second quarter of 2017, Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities Client Execution continued to operate in a challenging environment characterized by low levels of volatility and low client activity.

What goes on in these places is what is wrong for the whole global economy. As I wrote last week, it is a difficult link to establish in the official perception, let alone the wider common one:

The issue is, as Fitch highlights, the “bond-trading business.” The term itself only clouds the global economic issue further; workers all over the world are being screwed because banks like DB can’t make enough money in bonds? Forget that. It sounds so ridiculous that even sympathetic politicians aren’t going be able to make that connection.

There is very little actual bond trading in “bond trading.” The more basic discussion revolves instead around what is a modern bank, and how does that modern bank function in the monetary realm. We aren’t even starting at Square One with that conversation for several reasons, primary among them that what these banks, or really “banks”, do doesn’t fit into accounting statements or government statistics.