Self-Knowledge

A Wall Street broker has left Manhattan to become a monk in a Bulgarian monastery. Hristo Mishkov was a broker on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York until he gave it all up to return to his native Bulgaria.

He now wakes at dawn to attend to a herd of cheese-producing buffalo in the 12th century Tsurnogorski monastery, 30 miles west of Sofia. Exchanging designer suits and shoes for a cassock and sandals, Brother Nikanor believes Wall Street and the City deserve all they get as the global financial system goes into meltdown.

“It is right to see people who consume more than they deserve shattered by a financial crisis from time to time, to suffer so that they can become more reasonable,” he said. The collapse of banks and investment firms was a necessary correction because they had grown greedy, he said.

“Many people in the world do not realise that they have not earned the food they eat, that they take without giving,” said Mr Mishkov, 32, who worked for Karoll, one of Bulgaria’s leading brokerages. “But if someone consumes more than they have earned, it means someone else is starving.”