It's the conversation every parent dreads. "Mom, dad, you know how I've always been a little different from the other kids? Well, I think it's time you knew the truth. I think I'm, um, an investment banker!"

So how do you stop the fruit of your loins, the inheritors of your estate, the bearers of your lineage, from making a huge lifestyle mistake and bringing shame on your name? Here are some alternative professions you should consider steering your offspring toward in order to avoid the stigma of having a finance professional in the family. There's no parrot, eye patch, tricorn hat or peg leg these days. You do, however, get your own AK-47 rifle. In recent weeks, piracy has become the highest-profile profession in the world. Shiver me timbers!

To be sure, hijacking supertankers was a lot more lucrative when oil was trading at more than $140 a barrel, compared with its current value of about $50. The past year's 90 percent decline in the Baltic Dry Index, a measure of the cost of shipping commodities around the world, suggests ship owners aren't earning enough money to buy the kind of armed protection that might make a pirate's life more difficult.