As the recession has intensified, the general public has been quick to hurl insults not only at the City, but also the people inside it. The caricature of a gluttonous City banker with money oozing out every crevice has been so wildly exaggerated, it makes real City bankers look parsimonious.

But until last week, I’d never experienced any of this hostility directly. Then I had coffee with a friend of mine who works in media. I explained to him that I was thinking of leaving the City to become a writer.

“Not a chance,” he said, with a smirk. “You’re way too greedy to give up the comforts of your City paycheck.”

Before I could pitch my defense – the plan was to become a best-selling author, not starving artist – his words struck a chord, and I began to think about whether he was right. And whether it’s such a bad thing.

Greed: it’s a loaded word. It’s a dirty word. But it hasn’t always been. Its connotations shift and change depending on the spirit of the times.

As a child in the eighties, I heard a remarkably different tone: “Greed is good, greed is right. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind” - or at least did for Gordon Gekko.

It got me thinking: what exactly makes someone “greedy?” Is it the restless desire for improvement? Or the inability to answer the question, ”how much is enough?” I suppose this describes me perfectly, but don’t see why I should be ashamed of it.

I wasn’t born rich, and I entered the City so I could work hard and make a nice life. My friend in the media, on the other hand, has never made much money, struggling by on less than £30k per year. In some respects, “greedy” seems like the label attached to successful people by jealous, less successful ones.

Alas, Gordon Gekko is no longer a hero, and City bankers have become public enemy No. 1., but the bottom line is that we don’t deserve the public’s abuse, or their sympathy. We are, in most people’s eyes, unambiguously greedy. But so is everybody else. Greed is innate – the only difference is that City bankers have more money.

My friend and I could only agree on one thing: the line between shamelessly ambitious and callously rapacious is a fine one. I don’t think I’ve crossed it yet. But if I stay in the City any longer, I believe I just might.