We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money. Whether it's a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn't matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn't hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone's 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I've never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you're only going to hurt yourselves. What's going to happen when we can't find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We're going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We're used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don't take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don't demand a union. We don't retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we'll eat that.
For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We're going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I'll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.
So now that we're going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we're going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren't going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We're going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it's really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.
We aren't dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Wall Street Traders Are Coming For Your Job!
From The Corner on National Review Online. I repeat it all here, as it is wonderful stuff:
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4 comments:
I hate to resort to a grade school retort, but "I'm shaking in my shoes." I don't for a minute think that this letter represents all of Wall Street, but at the same time, how about a little contrition? Was everything they did above board? Did they suffer from a little hubris. So what if this was propelled by the remoras of society who just wanted a "free ride." How about a little responsibility, just because the zeitgeist is propelling market makers to carve out that competitive advantage - because I've we didn't do it someone else would - how about a little moral backbone to say something like....hmmm we've actually captured the rating agencies, while beneficial in the short term, this is probably NOT how it is supposed to be. Oh, that's right, we have regulatory agencies for that, no need to self-police. Just evade err..innovate. Sure you may have work ethic, but some of you lack ethics and that's my problem. The irony me is that conservatives who are fond of invoking Buckley's "standing athwart history yelling STOP" some how don't seem to think it is worth applying this idea to the world of finance. How about even a WHOA. Who do you think you are, the effing love spawn of Gordon Gekko and Col. Nathan Jessup?! If you want to come take a job, why don't you enlist in the Service and help stand a real watch.
Nice retort. Very nice.
The above response was mine - typos and all. Too lazy to log in or type my name out.
Although I think this was penned to drive up the antagonism, and more likely than not, it's not by someone on Wall Street, I'm with Robt. Thorn on this one. His response reminded me of that great line in the Sinatra sketch on SNL -- "I've got chunks of guys like you in my stool."
I worked in M&A on WS for one of the scariest, most ethically-challenged iBanks in the world in the late '80's-- right as the firm went down hard. The traders they escorted out of the pen with their pink slips and post-coke nasal drips went charging out into the world with the same "we eat what we kill" attitude. Most of those who didn't go to jail in the shakeout became news anchors or went right back into the industry, they didn't become elementary school teachers, auto workers, airline pilots, or other union workers, or step into tenure-level faculty positions requiring a PhD and a life without "upside" as he knows it. They are heading up Blackstone and Cerberus and Apollo, crying their way to the bank every day.
I'm trying to imagine this writer, or at least the character portrayed, starting the ladder on that high school position at $35K -- (not $85K) plus a rocking $3K summer school stipend (if he's got the Masters degree or two required). I'm impressed that he (or she) can stay up until 10pm, eats lunch in under an hour and doesn't wet himself for long stretches. Sounds a lot like what's required of my 4 YO for ballet camp this summer. Hope he has a good letter of reference.
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