Pain & Pleasure

mingsphinx · Apr 20, 2009

http://nymag.com/news/businessfinance/56151/

For its candor, this is one of the very best articles that I have found on the topic. Well worth a read.

Everyone on Wall Street is prepared to lose money. Bankers have expressions for disastrous losses: clusterfuck, Chernobyl, blowing up Â¡_ But no one was prepared to lose money this way. This felt like getting mugged.
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In a witch hunt, the witches have feelings, too. As populist rage has erupted around the country, stoked by canny politicians, an opposite rage has built on Wall Street and other arenas where the wealthy hold sway. Its expression is more furtive and itÂ¡Â¯s often mixed with a kind of sublimated shame, but it can be every bit as vitriolic.
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Â¡Â°No offense to Middle America, but if someone went to Columbia or Wharton, [even if] their company is a fumbling, mismanaged bank, why should they all of a sudden be paid the same as the guy down the block who delivers restaurant supplies for Sysco out of a huge, shiny truck?Â¡Â± e-mails an irate Citigroup executive to a colleague.
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To Wall Street people who have grown up in the bubble, the meaning of the crisis is only slowly sinking in. They canÂ¡Â¯t yet grasp the idea of a life lived on less. Â¡Â°Without exception, Wall Street guys have gotten accustomed to not being stuck in the city in August. So it becomes a right to have a summer home within an hour or two commute from Manhattan,Â¡Â± says the Goldman vet. Â¡Â°ThereÂ¡Â¯s a cost structure of going with your family on summer vacation thatÂ¡Â¯s not optional. ThereÂ¡Â¯s a cost structure of spending $40,000 to send your kids to private school that is not optional. ThereÂ¡Â¯s a sense of entitlement, that you need that amount of money just to live, thatÂ¡Â¯s not optional.Â¡Â±

Â¡Â°You canÂ¡Â¯t live in New York and have kids and send them to school on $75,000,Â¡Â± he continues. Â¡Â°And you have the Obama administration suggesting that. That was a very populist thing that Obama said. HeÂ¡Â¯s being disingenuous. He knows that you canÂ¡Â¯t live in New York on $75,000.Â¡Â±
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Â¡Â°I was at a cocktail party on Friday. Some guy said to me, Â¡Â®You work on Wall Street? HowÂ¡Â¯s that working out for you?Â¡Â¯ Â¡Â± says the JPMorgan banker who was forced out in a recent round of layoffs. Â¡Â°There was a little bit of nastiness there.Â¡Â±
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Â¡Â°Suddenly, the simple fact I work on Wall Street means that IÂ¡Â¯m a bad person? You know, I lost my job. IÂ¡Â¯m more of a victim.Â¡Â±
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mingsphinx · Apr 22, 2009

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=b271379bbb9bce78abd14b3865164631

I love this, the immigrants are abandoning finance, they want stability.

Sujal Parikh, a second-year med student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, says that like his parents, he wanted to be in a career that was Â¡Â°well regarded.Â¡Â± And did income influence his decision at all?

Â¡Â°Absolutely. ThatÂ¡Â¯s one of the nice things about a career in medicine,Â¡Â± Parikh said.
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Imagine all these former bangster wannabes turning to medicine. There is going to be lots of empathy and care from the doctors and nurses of the future.

Gold Standard · Apr 22, 2009

Quote from mingsphinx:

Imagine all these former bangster wannabes turning to medicine. There is going to be lots of empathy and care from the doctors and nurses of the future. [/B]
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This is s0o0o appropriate considering the medicare reform that is coming.

mingsphinx · Apr 26, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/business/26pay.html?hp

This article is a special treat for those who lost their Wall Street gig in the last year or so. Imagine how it feels like to be chucked out of the door and to land on your ass so that some chump can continue to collect on a 7 figure bonus.

Mike20002000 · Apr 26, 2009

Isn't it a little odd that 90% of the banks posted "earnings"? I bet we see losses by 3rd quarter. I follow the earning results here...

http://www.fortune500earnings.com

mingsphinx · Apr 27, 2009

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/05/04/090504ta_talk_widdicombe

This is what Bloomberg is spending your tax dollars on.

Â¡Â°I was laid off in September,Â¡Â± Ed Keever said. Â¡Â°Oppenheimer & Co.Â¡Â± He had found work at a friendÂ¡Â¯s company, removing mold from office buildings. Â¡Â°It was very manual,Â¡Â± he said. Â¡Â°You have to wear a mask and sometimes a full Tyvek suit. We looked like the men from Mars.Â¡Â± He paused. Â¡Â°When I was little, I wanted to be a dentist.Â¡Â±

The men were participants in JumpStart NYC, a free, government-funded program that is training laid-off Wall Streeters for new careers, the idea being that, even if youÂ¡Â¯ve come to terms with no paycheck, trying to do business without a BarronÂ¡Â¯s subscription or a Bloomberg terminal can take some getting used to.
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Â¡Â°Having spent several years following the foot soldiers of Wall Street, head-to-toe, I find myself at the focal point of self-reflection. Where am I? What am I doing? . . . These are questions tattooed into my psycheÂ¡Â±
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Kevin Stocklin, who used to structure C.D.O.s, had been working on a documentary called Â¡Â°We All Fall Down: The American Mortgage Crisis,Â¡Â± and he said he hoped one day to make Â¡Â°dark comedies, like the Coen brothers.Â¡Â± A blond guy in a windbreaker said, Â¡Â°When I left U.B.S., I started trying to build a T-shirt business, but there was a lack of demand.Â¡Â±
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Jacqueline Maduneme, a tall woman with gray eyes, said that she had been laid off from the risk-management department at Citigroup. Before that, sheÂ¡Â¯d thought about modelling. Â¡Â°When I was moving to New York, a lot of people told me, Â¡Â®Go get a modelling portfolio! You have the presence.Â¡Â¯ Â¡Â± She went on, Â¡Â°I wonder what would have happened if I had done it.Â¡Â±
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mingsphinx · Apr 28, 2009

http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=12735

You know I love this!

And it's not just women who have taken a dodgy detour off the professional high road.

"We have noticed an increase in guys calling in for jobs that don't normally work in our line of business," says Tommy (last name withheld), who calls himself the "head hunk" at the Manhattan male strip club Hunkmania, located on West 21st Street. "We recently hired a guy from Fairfield County who had lost his job on Wall Street."
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mingsphinx · May 9, 2009

http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/08/wall-street-careers-crisis-personal-finance-after-wall-street.html

A feel good piece meant to help motivate the wankers who have been out of a job for so long they no longer knows what it feels like to be working. The usual crap: start your own business, do something that has the glamour of having perceived social impact like the save the world so that people will not think that you are such a loser... blah, blah, blah.

mingsphinx · May 10, 2009

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/index....id=105&id=39610&Itemid=1&sectionid=34&secid=0

Barrack, Barrack, you did this.

mingsphinx · May 12, 2009

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/MakeMoney/story?id=7555292&page=1

Models for art classes can make anywhere from $15 to $20 an hour working at a school and can make even more working for private artists. And they don't always have to be nude -- clothed models churn a profit, too.

Model Derrick Young, a former banker, said the work is fulfilling, but a lot harder than you might think.

"You're sometimes working eight or nine hours a day," Young said. "That's a long time to be silent and hold completely still."
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Be naked for $15/hour, that is the advice for desperate out of work bankers. Well at least it is classy; it is about art and everthing. Aiyaiyai! And to think that these people were supposed to have worked with their brains.