Good article in the Times about how everything went to the top at Goldman that had these paragraphs:
One camp of traders was insisting that the American housing market was safe. Another thought it was poised for collapse.
Among those who saw disaster looming were an effusive young Frenchman, Fabrice P. Tourre, and his quiet colleague, Jonathan M. Egol, the mastermind behind a series of mortgage deals known as the Abacus investments.
Their elite mortgage unit is now at the center of allegations that Goldman and Mr. Tourre, 31, defrauded investors with one of those complex deals.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t the mortgage unit that Joseph Cassano ran at AIG Financial Products also considered “elite?” At any rate, Goldman’s “elite” mortgage unit with the “Fabulous Fab” was smart enough to see what was going to happen! They were like investment commandos! They had the BALLS to make the wild trades that others are too much of a pussy to make! They throw their double-foam latte in the faces of their aides when it isn’t perfect, and they’re not afraid to return a martini four times until it is just right.
But what is so elite about seeing the mortgage collapse coming in 2006? Kevin Drum, now at Mother Jones., was blogging at Calpundit before he went to the Washington Monthly, and he was talking about the housing bubble as far back as 2004 and maybe even earlier. He had so many posts about it from 2006-2007 at WaMo that he was apologizing to his readers for talking about it so much.
But back to what set me off- the notion that there are “elite” units within Goldman and in finance. It just reminds me so much of the behind the scenes stories of the guys at Enron, as detailed in the The Smartest Guys in the Room, how Skilling would lead these exotic trips that everyone had to attend- motocross trips, skiing, skydiving, extreme hiking, and they were forced to go so they could all compare penis sizes. These were adventurers! They are the elites of the elite! They were manly men (watch the whole thing, but start at around 3:02 for the relevant portion):
We see the same sort of nonsense in the Republican party with all the keyboard commandos like Peter Wehner telling us that we have to remain firm, and we have to FIGHT! We see it in the ridiculous military looking patches for the “Red State Strike Force” and other silly things like that. And, of course, Glenn Greenwald wrote an entire book about this nonsense.
Sure, greed played a role in all this, but it really is becoming abundantly clear that our nation is being run into the ground by a bunch of “elites” who are having their revenge on the rest of us because they couldn’t get laid and were given too many wedgies in High School. And we’re literally paying for their revenge.
I used to think American Psycho was a work of fiction.
Jamie
Hanging is too good for them. The Govmint may want to bring back Drawing and quartering.
El Cid
If this were car salesmen being written about like this, no one would perceive them as magic Druidic wizards able to warp time and space around their 17 dimensional dealings.
MattF
It seems to me that we keep coming back to that old theory about how people deal with cognitive dissonance: by establishing a group within which the unacceptable reality and the required belief become a social taboo and a social norm, respectively. “Ca plus change…” etc.
Linda Featheringill
Testosterone toxicity.
marion
Graham Greene once said “the world is run by the people we hated in high school”.
PaulW
Um, as someone still dealing with the emotional scarring of the 7th grade, I don’t see myself in these upper management ‘elites’. I look at these guys and I see the bullies – arrogant, self-serving, insisting they were always in the right – who were picking on the likes of me. Have you looked at the backgrounds on these guys, which schools they went to, what clubs they were in back in the day? Did these guys come out from the Glee Club, the Chess Club, or the Lacrosse team?
Svensker
Yup.
Brian J
Off the top of my head, “elite” probably means more exotic (as in, not a regular bond) than exclusive (as in, only open to wealthy people).
Anyway, I can’t criticize these people for taking both long and short positions on these securities. That seems like they are just covering all of their bases. But when they purposefully set up things to fail? To the extent that it’s different–it sounds like it is, but perhaps I am missing something–it’s an entirely different story. I try to keep an open mind about this stuff, but I can’t think of a good defense when you not simply bet things that might fail, but that you actively try for that to happen. What’s the social value in that?
Xenos
I cast my vote with the contrarian PaulW here. The people doing the kleptocratic routine think themselves to be a natural aristocracy. In some case they are randroid rebels from the lower middle class, but most are a few generations into a fair bit of wealth, and really do consider themselves as lions born among endless flocks of sheep.
Brian J
@PaulW:
I think you’re headed in the right direction. These seem like the sort of guys who would have their parents call up and argue if they didn’t get the grade they wanted or show up late to class and not care if the teacher/professor said anything.
Prospero
I was with you till the last paragraph. Seriously, what the hell? Are you trying to legitimize school bullying with an excuse that those bullied are going to grow up into assholes anyway?
Cat Lady
Good to know that we’re all at the mercy of high school nerds and pen1s size.
It’s not surprising that it’s usually a woman who blows the whistle.
Max Power
A clinical symptom used to diagnose the psychopath is a predilection for extreme risk-taking behavior.
The cliche of the psychopath has them running around with a chainsaw, but plenty of the undiagnosed ones work in office buildings – and you’ll find them as likely as not at the top floors with the corner-windows offices.
Xenos
As for predatory lions, this is the comic I was trying to remember…
SteveinSC
Little Mayor Bloomberg on Scarface had the nerve to call the Wall Street Money Churners an industry!
aimai
The system is bound to work this way. They have a duty, to themselves and (some) of their clients, to make money on the front and back end of every deal, and to take long and short positions to do it. The problem for the rest of us is that this is no way to run an economy,and that many of their business counterparties—both those dealing with them directly and those whose mortgages were held indirectly–were relying on some kind of weird notion of good faith, or trickle down economic good, in which somehow a rising tide would lift all boats. Many investors and, in fact, the entire country and world financial system were essentially collateral damage and there’s no way they couldn’t have been when the trades got so big. The “system” worked fine: lots of people got screwed.
aimai
daveNYC
Hell, Tanta and CR saw this coming a mile away; and while they are/were both what I would call elite when it comes to brain power and writing ability, they were certainly not elite in the financial industry sense.
Elite really should mean ‘really good at their job’, not just ‘really highly paid’. Unfortunately, our society has bought into the idea that people are paid what they are worth, so anyone bringing in the high six figures or more is some sort of Übermensch
geg6
@Brian J:
Exactly. Spoiled little pissants who are laboring under an excess of completely delusional self-esteem. Assholes who have been taken care of their entire lives, never had to take responsibility for anything, and who seem to think they are some sort of exception to every rule.
I hate them with a white hot hate.
Uloborus
@MattF:
Still not Cognitive Dissonance. What you read online is misleading (not ‘false’, but misleading). Cognitive Dissonance is the process whereby people change their beliefs to match their actions (sometimes, but not often, the other way around). That stuff about holding conflicting beliefs – that’s a possible explanation for it that a lot of practicing psychiatrists have never even heard of. And frankly, anybody who’s studied psych expects humans to hold conflicting beliefs. It’s a big ‘duh’.
jwb
“Sure, greed played a role in all this, but it really is becoming abundantly clear that our nation is being run into the ground by a bunch of “elites” who are having their revenge on the rest of us because they couldn’t get laid and were given too many wedgies in High School.”
I don’t know, but it seems to me that smacking indifferently on “elites” like this is playing right into the rightwing anti-science, anti-intellectual meme, but the problem isn’t fundamentally the elites, it’s the assholes.
Uloborus
@jwb:
Yeah, but thinking you’re part of some select group that’s better than everyone else is typical asshole behavior.
You have a valid point, though. In high school, it was the guys who were getting laid who acted like this. ‘Ooh, look at me, I have an excuse to claim I’m better!’ and damn if people don’t fall for it.
Jay C
@SteveinSC:
Yeah, well Mayor Mike (who, it will be recalled, made his own considerable fortune from providing market information to Money-Churners worldwide) would call it an “Industry” the City he’s Mayor of still (sadly) relies on taxes on the Finance sector for a nontrivial percentage of its income. Which of course, can always be squeezed out of alternative sources (i.e. the pockets of the less-well-off: amazingly, taxes and fees here have gone UP over the past two years) – but when the fiscal health of The Big Apple depends to no small extent on the level of Wall Street bonuses: yes, it IS an “Industry”. And one which has to be kept happy.
Outside of Lower Manhattan, though:… not so much.
El Cid
Studies consistently show that such occupants of upper class economic positions come out of the American social upper classes, and are not the result of some psycho-sexual process in ordinary school systems. Some, yes. But not by the numbers.
Professor
Jamie, the punishment was known as ‘hanged, drawn and quartered’. Please check on Google what the punishment really entailed. Very barbaric!
Cerberus
It’s anxious toxic masculinity.
What this means is there is healthy masculinity, and then there is what the patriarchy considers masculinity which is often about avoiding the appearance of anything feminine and potential quickness to violence to prove that. This is because the patriarchy depicts culturally to men, masculinity as something that can be revoked by any displays of femininity. Thus, if you want to retain the privileges of manhood (such as not being considered the “hole to fuck” in sexual interactions) then you better keep performing a toxic parody of ultra-masculinity and become highly anxious about any perceived threats
And the anxious toxic masculinity is at the bottom of a lot of things. It’s the id of the “women want to steal my pen.is away” that highlights the “liberals want to steal my gun/hummer/polluting factories/wars/hard-earned money (ooh so hard and we all know bitches only care about what you make so it’s like they are trying to steal their fine tail and sexual potency with their insidious taxes)” issues.
Since the patriarchy also sells this toxic masculinity as critical for sexual success (i.e. bagging the hot chicks), it raises the stakes even more and causes a desperate panicked anxiety about it precisely because the type of behavior that would move you up the toxic masculinity pecking order is also going to turn off a large number of independent women thus making the anxious masculinity suffer feel like they need to “make it up” to stay in the game.
The end result of this is you end up with hideous parodies of this performed toxic masculinity. War bloggers trying to one-up the atrocities they’re willing to high-five and teabag themselves over. “Elite financial men” trying to out-perform each other to show they are worthy of the top-dawg spot. Etcetera.
The real hideous problem and why its so toxic is that the patriarchal forces that make these people so unsuccessful with actual women works great for homosocial bonding. The more toxic masculinity scrabblers you have in a male-dominated industry, the more critical this performance becomes for real world job prospects. If you aren’t “one of the guys” and willing to dish out the necessary toxic masculinity and if you aren’t willing to play the rush to the bottom game in those environments, then you’re going to be on the outs which may even lead to being the first one cut when layoffs come.
When you note that many bosses and middle management are definitely playing the game, the stakes are very clearly set. If you want to succeed in business, become a douchebag.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: Generally, I think you hit the nail on the head. I have two observations, though. First, if it turns out that there was, in fact, actual fraud, then the system did not work. Traders who work for their own, and their clients’, interests while operating within the law are one thing. Traders who acted illegally are another. Second, stronger, enforceable, and enforced regulations are required to prevent traders from wrecking the economy for their own profit. The bankers made money from the 30s to the 80s, yet the system was stable. A lesson can be learned, I think.
El Cid
@jwb: No, I disagree — the fundamental problem is that the multi-decades of attacks on regulations and social fairness programs by the political wings of the venal uppermost classes for their own economic benefit has been among the most damaging processes we’ve been through. The U.S. upper classes are extremely dangerous and when allowed too much political power deconstruct the country for their personal interests. Since their late 1960s corporate charge to start rolling back the New Deal in favor of anti-union outsourcing right up through Reaganite and post-Reaganite restructuring of regulation, trade and tax policies in favor of the specific uppermost U.S. social classes, the measurable circumstances of the rest of the nation have worsened.
We must be focused in our criticism of the super-wealthy, and not be trapped into the right’s faux-populist Khmer Rougism where “elite” means “book-larnin” and not “multi-generational centi-millionaires and billionaires”.
El Cid
@Cerberus: Good points, but I think you’ll summon the appearance of one BOB.
Maude
@geg6:
THIS. Also. Too.
WereBear
Since it’s Confederacy History Month, I must point out that whole Regions fall for it.
And if someone has to do this kind of thing to feel good about themselves; Someone is a really pathetic asswipe, aren’t they?
That’s the truth they run from.
bill
Not to quibble, but I’ve got a feeling these dudes got laid plenty back in the day, along with getting plenty of everything else in life that denotes success, elitism and power. A self-image as a “master of the universe” doesn’t come from a history of rejection.
chris
I seem to remember a week or so ago a story ran that POTUS “pleaded” (I thought that wording was strong) with the financial industry to stop lobbying against the financial reform package. I wonder if there was a “big stick” waiting behind that “plead” when they didn’t respond? Anyone remember that from a week or so ago?
RAM
John, don’t forget Atrios. His constant sniping about the Big Shitpile, in combination with my own observation of the rising tide of foreclosure notices in our local weekly newspaper, prompted me to insist our financial guy get our retirement investments out of anything remotely connected to mortgages. Granted, we lost a few thousand dollars when the crash came, but it was miniscule compared to virtually all of our friends. And we’ve made it all back and then some.
The financial crash was not only foreseeable, it was foreseen. It’s just that most of those who should have been paying attention weren’t and disparaged those who were. And when the Shitpile hit the fan, they were embarrassed to admit that, like the Bush Administration prior to 9/11, they refused to see what was in plain sight all the time.
Moses2317
Now is our chance to do something about stopping these clowns from ruining our economy again in the future.
President Obama and the Democrats have good legislation pending in the Senate that we need to make sure stays strong and gets passed. In addition, we should use this opportunity to remind the American public that progressives are fighting to protect our economy and their taxpayer dollars from a repeat of the financial disaster over the past couple of years, while Republicans are fighting for the banksters.
We should all call our Senators and write letters to the editor supporting President Obama’s efforts and demanding that Wall Street reform be passed that includes at least the following three key elements:
1. Avoiding future Wall Street bailouts – the Democrat’s proposed Wall Street reform would avoid the need for future bailouts by authorizing the government to seize and sell off failing financial institutions rather than letting them get to the point where taxpayers have to bail them out. This proposal would essentially extend to other financial institutions the authority that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation currently has over failing banks.
2. An independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency – The Democrat’s proposal is to consolidate the consumer protection efforts that are currently spread between seven different agencies into a single Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The Agency would have the authority to enforce laws and create new rules to protect consumers in a full array of financial sectors, including mortgages, credit cards, payday loans, debt collection, credit reporting, and financial services. It is critical, however, that this Agency be independent of the Federal Reserve.
3. Stringently regulate derivatives – Derivatives are financial instruments that derive their value from other financial instruments, events, or conditions. For example, derivatives are created when a company bets on the future value of a certain stock or currency. While some derivatives, such as corn or livestock futures, are traded on exchanges that are relatively well regulated, many are currently over-the-counter derivatives that operate with little oversight. The Democrat’s proposal would require that most derivatives be traded through exchanges, would increase regulation of those that do not, and would require that derivatives businesses be walled off from the rest of the business at a financial institution so that the serious losses that can be incurred in derivatives will not cause the entire financial institution to crash.
President Obama and the Senate Democratic leadership is stepping up their efforts over the next couple of weeks to get Wall Street reform passed. Let’s support these efforts and also hold the Democrats’ feet to the fire as the inevitable pushback from the banksters occurs.
Brian J
@jwb:
Yes.
Cat Lady
@chris:
Yes, but now he’s going to have to ram his “big stick” down their throats. :-D
jwb
@El Cid: I would agree with you about class; but I think framing it in terms of the “elites” is the wrong language to use because it is exactly the same language the teatards and goopers use in denouncing intellectuals, scientists and really anyone who isn’t a no-nothing real Merkin. And all we’ll do by adopting this language is to continue the framing that helped elect a no-nothing economic elite who was particularly talented at clearing brush and perhaps help elect in the near future someone like a no-nothing puppet of the economic elite who likes to hunt from helicopters.
aimai
Cerberus,
I agree that in this case it was out and out fraud that is the issue. But the market was going to crash anyway and, looking at the NYT article this morning, it doesn’t seem as if the various trader components of Goldman Sachs had any idea what to do when it did. The discussions among the traders revolved around fantasy notions that the market was sound and that they could and should continue selling these CDOS on that basis. Since, as its been pointed out, the market was never sound and CDOs were such a huge part that when they crashed the whole market would crash, you’ve got to have some theory about why the “smartest guys in the room” couldn’t see that. And the answer has to be that a) they weren’t that smart, b) they each had a duty to only a very small segment of the market–a duty to know it, to understand it, and to manipulate it that wasn’t commesurate with the risk they were taking for their counterparties. That’s what I mean by the system “worked” as set up. If every one of those traders had continued to judge the market for himself, and do whatever he thought he needed to do to make money, pretty much exactly the same thing would have happened. GS was split into two groups: one who thought the market would last forever, and one who didn’t. Both continued to try to make money. Only one group could make money–the group that correctly anticipated the crash and took the short position using insurance and gaming the insurance (the Abacus plan was, essentially, a plan to create and time a market failure to take advantage of shorting/insurance).
aimai
Culture of Truth
All good points, but we should still attack Iran! And Yemen!
Also Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Sudan, Russia, China, France, Iceland….
cleek
now that the GOP is the party of the people, and no longer the party of Wall St (thanks, Cokie Roberts, for telling me this!), i expect McConnell and the rest of the Guaranteed Obstructionist Party will have a whole boatload of proposals for dealing with these parasites.
Save us Mitch McConnell, you’re our only hope!
MattF
@Uloborus
I was thinking of this.
liberal
@Moses2317:
It might be better than nothing, but last I checked the “good” financial bloggers were pretty skeptical about it.
liberal
AFAICT the earliest, perhaps apart from Shiller, was Dean Baker.
numbskull
Agreed with you until that line. These are most decidedly NOT the dweebs of high school. Having spent most of my later-formative and professional life around puh-lenty of wealthy kids and young professionals, from my experience anyway, these guys who gamed the system are the classic “born with the silver spoons in their mouths” types. Not only did they get laid in high school, but they got laid with the ‘hottest babes’, who, too, were born with silver spoons in their mouths. They are the true rich and elite.
How do you think these guys even get in the door at joints like G-S? Sure every once in a while there is a Gordon Gecko who started poor, worked schlub jobs to get through NYU, then hit The Street with hatred and vengeance in his heart to beat the elites at their own game. (And note that the successful, rich Gecko still wasn’t really in the club.) But the vast majority of these assholes were born to it. Their daddies did it and their daddies’ daddies did it. I’ll wager that they honest-to-God don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
Phoebe
@Cat Lady: Yeah, and a female reporter who keeps having the nerve to ask how the profits are made.
The whole flavor of that movie was deja vu, and I kept thinking, “where have I seen this before?” and yeah. It was High School. And Junior High [“middle school” in the olden days]. I’m actually surprised that they hired any women. What were they thinking with that? I think they maybe weren’t totally aware of how crucial the cult of macho was to the whole thing. Which seems unbelievable, but it’s like fish being unaware of water. They just live it.
liberal
@jwb:
I agree. I think it’s probably true that many of the Wall St. guys come from reasonably wealthy families, but it’s not the real issue. The real issue is that Wall St. is nothing but a parasitic rent collection scam. Doesn’t matter if the principles are from wealthy families or worked their way up from the mailroom.
Punchy
A frog named Frebreeze crashed the US economy?
tesslibrarian
@cleek: That Inskeep let Cokie say those things this morning without anything to back any of it up, then our local system cut in to beg for money was almost more than I could take this morning.
Especially the part where Inskeep says “let’s talk about polls” and then they proceed NOT to talk about polls but insinuate that Barbara Boxer must be in real trouble if Obama is going to CA to campaign for her. Really? Maybe it’s a feather in your cap to have a popular President campaign for you. But, oh wait, Obama can’t be “popular;” he’s a Democrat.
Argh! I hate starting my week angry.
El Cruzado
On the Jocks vs. Nerds debate, I’ll say that to me it seems like it’s more of a tag-team, since you always see a handful of the more silent, brainy guys around (like the one mentioned in the article who did aerospace engineering, then finance). One side brings in the contacts and the chutzpah, the other one brings in the actual smarts.
They think they are the Justice League of America but end up being the Evil League of Evil.
cleek
@tesslibrarian:
she’s a fucking disgrace. she couldn’t bother saying if there’s any truth to the GOP’s criticism; she could only talk about the meta-political appearances of their criticism.
is McConnell lying? who cares! that’s not important! what’s really important is that the Democrats are on the defense because of it. (and no, it can’t be the case that the GOP is forced into a corner and is defensively lashing-out. no, republicans don’t play defense.) Obama’s in trouble, and this is good news for Republicans!
fuck you Cokie.
our fundraiser is coming up, but as they always manage to, NPR has convinced me that they don’t deserve my money.
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
In those days, the firms were general partnerships. Every partner’s entire net worth was on the line all day, every day. That created incentives for entirely different kinds of behavior.
Surly Duff
The problem is that the definition of elite has changed immeasurable in this country. It used to mean an individual or group that, based on its specialization or knowledge base or experience was superior. Now elite simply means making shitloads of cash at any cost. That is why a NY Times article now uses the term “elite mortgage group” to describe an office that resorted to fraud to succeed. When did scheming and cheating the public become an elite enterprise?
Crusty Dem
Wow. Horrifying video.
Old school decimation..
numbskull
@Surly Duff:
When was it NOT?
Spend some time with the generations-rich. Many cliches exist because they are based in a truth. This is one of those cliches. The classic elite, right out of a Capra Depression-era movie, have always been with us and they’ve always been scheming and cheating the public. This elite has been fighting the New Deal since its inception. Hell, this elite was the reason we needed a New Deal! They finally got what they wanted – deregulation and lowering of upper margin taxes – but only after decades of buying up media and pols to create monopolies (again). Worked out great for them. Not so good for us. But don’t tell the dumb-as-shit “conservative” man in the street that he’s the chicken voting for Colonel Sanders. Mustn’t upset the masses!
Yes I agree that there has been all kinds of expansion of what “elite” means. But the same old “old money” is still there and still scheming and cheating.
Shinobi
@Uloborus: That’s weird that most psychologists have never heard of that theory of how cognitive dissonance functions… I read a whole book on it and have no interest in psychology. Actually fairly relevant to the whole wall street debacle it is called “Mistakes were made But not by Me”
Really really interesting
sparky
@El Cid: yes, exactly.
looking at this from the perspective of a person who left NYC to live in a less elite part of the USA, it seems to me that much of the rest of the country really doesn’t understand how that place operates.* new york is about money, and how to best display one’s pile of money. it is the predatory capitalism of the used car lot writ large. it has always had some of that since the Civil War, but in the older days there were certain restraints, as any reader of Edith Wharton knows. outsiders, whether from Queens or Bridgeport or even (shudder) Iowa, were (and are) tolerated, barely. so the idea that the nerds of yesteryear are today’s masters of the universe displays a deep misunderstanding of the structure of power (as distinct from politics) in the US. thus while i can applaud JC for thinking about the issue, this post is a good example of why so many smart well-meaning people in this country have a hard time grasping the essence of the hands holding the levers of power in the US.** the money power should never be confused with political power, if only because the former is determined to never show its hand unless necessary, whereas political power delights in showing itself.
if you want a more robust example of the persistence of status and entree, look to the legal system. (the little kurfluffle about HLS & YLS grads on the Supreme Court is a good place to start.) i can think of only one modern pop culture effort that captures this accurately–the movie Michael Clayton. everything else gets it wrong because they ignore the status realities.
as for why Wall St. has become more of a parasite than in the past, i’d argue that the changes of today to a more openly self-deceptive/self-destructive culture stem more from the different methods of making money on Wall St: much of the money made today comes from repackaging rather than actual capital outlay, and much of the money is literally someone else’s money. there’s a big difference in the cautionary effects of investing your fellow Nassau Club member’s cash versus the pensions of some bunch of schlub teachers in Ohio. ultimately we are going to relive the 1930s but without any traitor to his class to ameliorate the pain.
edit: i should have said these times will perhaps be somewhere between the 1930s and the 1970s, if only because i neglected to factor in the power of that other hidden (excepting agitprop) dominant power-lever holder, the National Security State, known in older times as the War Party. the vast level of self-destructive consumption by the War Party will prevent a true depression. think of it as the WPA for war.
*there are pockets of understanding, but the inhabitants of those pockets generally keep mum. a few examples would be: Kenilworth, IL, Jupiter, FL, certain locations on the Peninsula and in LA County.
**as for the folks who are engaged in politics (and thus the political power), JC has the gift of excellent understanding married to acerbic wit.
Mark
El Cid@23, Bill@31 and Numbskull@44 have pointed out that the “nerds in high school” meme doesn’t come into play here.
I have a good friend who was an investment banker from 2000-2002 (until that shit job convinced him he had to do something good for the world.)
And what, pray tell, were the qualifications required at the two firms he worked at? (Morgan Stanley and Banc Boston, IIRC). He summed it up nicely: a liberal arts degree from an Ivy League school (ie – no math required) and you had to have played a sport, at least at the club level.
I-bankers are, for the most part, a bunch of spoiled douchebags. Some of them may be a bit socially awkward, but the vast majority of them are asshole frat boy private school kids who’ve really had everything handed to them their entire lives. Didn’t you see ‘Harold and Kumar go to White Castle’? Harold – the hard-working non-white kid who went to Princeton (wow, that’s someone’s fantasy) – gets pushed around by the two white frat boy assholes he works with.
So nobody’s getting back at anybody. A bunch of guys who’ve gotten away with everything their entire lives continues to get away with everything.
Mark
“new york is about money, and how to best display one’s pile of money.”
dead on. LA has always been perceived as America’s shallowest city, but I’ve come to think that it’s New York. In LA, you need connections with famous people plus fake tits or a (leased) BMW and three hours a day at the gym to claw your way into the club, but you could probably do it if that’s what appealed to you.
The ‘club’ in New York is impenetrable. Wrong school (elementary or college) or wrong parents, either way you’re on the outside until you can buy your way in.
And, of course, this is nothing compared to the ‘club’ in London, where you simply could never buy your way in. But that’s a small part of London compared to a huge part of New York.
jh
This.
Wall Street is filled with jocks and nerds, all engaged in a sort of financial brinksmanship that runs on equal parts adrenaline and testosterone.
The Jocks are the MBA types, salesmen and dealmakers mainly. They work hard, play hard and feel as though they are smarter than 99% of the population and thus deserving of their priviledge.
Backing up these jock MBA types are the nerds, who build the financial models, tools and systems that allow the jocks to make the sales and run the day to day business of trading. Among them you will find a lot of PhDs in mathematics, physics or other hard sciences and lots of guys who got wedgied in high school.
The MBA types are quite simply, not smart enough to really understand what it is these guys are doing, but they are smart enough to utilize their work to bring in the revenue.
On Wall Street, the jocks and the nerds are on the same team, and what unites them is the prosect of seven figure bonuses at the end of every year.
dobrojutro
Skilling = Swayze in Point Break.
El Cid
@jwb:
I agree, which is why I and other writers I like always aim to link this analysis directly to the super-rich, the ultra-rich, the billionaires, the richest 1/10th of 1%, rather than the snobby guy at the Starbucks sippin’ on his damn lattay.
melmoth
I shall piss into the wind by making the following point:
When are we going to stop using words like “elite” and “smartest and brightest” and “best minds on Wall Street” and “capitalist geniuses” to describe these con men and thieves and Ponzi schemers. There is NOTHING they did that is “smart” or “genius.” They simply used old-fashioned gypsy trickery and bought off the people who might have called then on it. This is not “elite brilliance.” This is just another form of extortion, racketeering and flimflam. This is no small point. By perpetuating the “genius” myth we set the stage for the next round of this organized thievery by convincing ourselves that they all have some sort of math and language skills we lack, forcing us to cede the economy to them. This is the same stuff Mark Twain was writing about 150-plus years ago. Nowadays, it wears a yellow tie instead of a starched dickie. Once we stop deluding ourselves we’ll stop being deluded.