UnoccupyWallStreet: As 200,000 Depart, And The Rest Face Plunging Bonuses, A Look At Wall Street From The "Other Side"
“This is something very different,” said Huw Jenkins, a former head of investment banking at UBS AG who’s now a London- based managing partner at Brazil’s Banco BTG Pactual SA. “This is a structural change. The industry is shrinking.” In his latest profile piece, Bloomberg's Max Abelson captures some of the very much unspoken and tacit changes on Wall Street, which over the past several years has become the poster child of all that is wrong with the world, despite the fact that Wall Street does not exist in isolation from Washington, and the true enabler of all the criminal behavior are those men and women in the US Congress and Senate, whose conscience can be bought by the highest bidder. And while not a single person in DC is going to lose their job over the economic catastrophe of the past several years, Wall Street is preparing for one of the biggest layoff rounds ever. As Abelson reports, "John Brady, co-head of MF Global Inc.’s Chicago office, was having a vodka cocktail at the Ritz- Carlton in Naples, Florida, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, on the day his company reported its largest-ever quarterly loss. "Wow, the sun just set,” Brady said to his wife and two colleagues attending a conference with him, he recalled in an interview. “I hope it doesn’t set on MF Global.” A week later, on Oct. 31, the firm led by former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. co-Chief Executive Officer Jon Corzine collapsed. Brady and 1,065 colleagues joined a wave of firings that has washed away more than 200,000 jobs in the global financial-services industry this year, eclipsing 174,000 in 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show. BNP Paribas SA and UniCredit SpA announced cuts last week, and the carnage likely will worsen as Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis roils markets." While it will hardly evoke nary a tear from most, those curious at how the "other side" is faring with what may well be the worst bonus season on Wall Street, and the biggest layoff wave, in 3 years are encouraged to peruse the following profiles.
From Bloomberg:
In interviews, a dozen people who have lost jobs at firms including Societe Generale SA, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Jefferies Group Inc. described a grim banking landscape that also includes Occupy Wall Street protests against unemployment stuck above 9 percent and income inequality.
“These are by far my darkest days,” said Scott Schubert, 49, who was dismissed in late 2008 as a mergers-and-acquisitions banker at Jefferies, a New York-based securities firm, and has been unemployed since. “It’s harder and harder to look for a job and feel that there’s nothing there.”
Europe at the forefront:
Banks, insurers and asset managers in Western Europe have been hardest hit, announcing about 105,000 dismissals this year, 66 percent more than the region’s losses in 2008 at the depths of the financial crisis, Bloomberg data show. The 50,000 job cuts in North America this year are more than twice last year’s and fewer than the 175,000 in 2008.
At least therapists are laughing all the way to the bank
Neil Brener, a psychiatrist whose patients work in London’s City and Canary Wharf financial districts said the stress is contributing to panic attacks, binge drinking and chest pains.
“Because there are fewer jobs, people are unhappy about being stuck,” Brener said. “They don’t have options about moving, and there is a sense of feeling trapped.”
London hiring could be frozen next year, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research Ltd. Headcount in the City and Canary Wharf may fall to 288,225 by the end of the year, 27,000 fewer than in 2010 and the lowest since at least 1998, when there were 289,666 jobs, according to the London- based research firm.
There is hope... In 2023!
Wall Street won’t regain its lost jobs “until about 2023,” Marisa Di Natale, an economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said in an e-mail.
That’s not encouraging for Michael Reiner, 44, who lost his job in June as a credit strategist in New York for Societe Generale, France’s second-largest bank, whose shares are down 60 percent this year. When he called his wife to tell her the news, she was home watching “The Company Men,” a film about corporate downsizing, he said.
It wasn’t the first time Reiner had lost a job on Wall Street. He worked at Bear Stearns Cos. for 14 years until the firm collapsed in March 2008 and was taken over in a fire sale by JPMorgan Chase & Co. He said he was happy to have some time off with his family and go to Little League baseball games.
When he began looking for a job, he “wanted to find a place for the next 14 years,” he said. A recruiter brought him to Paris-based Societe Generale. It didn’t last that long.
It’s harder to talk about losing a job the second time, Reiner said. “There are a lot of people I haven’t told.”
Opportunities for employment “evaporated” as the European debt crisis escalated, he said. Now he spends his time going to his daughter’s field hockey games and managing his investments. He’s planning to make maple syrup from the trees in the backyard of his home in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
It is so bad that Jefferies, the bank that would hire everyone else who has been laid off (mostly by UBS), is also firing now:
For Schubert, the former Jefferies banker in his third year looking for work, the longer he’s out of a job, the harder it is for him to tell his 10-year-old son to do his homework, he said.
“It might seem outwardly to him that I’ve given up,” he said in an interview this month from his four-bedroom home in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. “I can’t come to the table and say, ‘Well, when you were five, I worked nonstop.’”
Schubert, who received a master’s degree in business administration from New York University in 1989 and was a managing director specializing in middle-market M&A deals at Jefferies, said he wasn’t surprised when he lost his job in 2008 during the financial crisis. He thought unemployment would last 12 months at most.
“The first year out was fruitless,” he said. “There wasn’t much hiring going on at all.”
By the middle of 2010, more potential employers seemed interested, and he felt “something was imminent,” he said. Nothing happened.
This year, he has become increasingly disheartened by bad news on Wall Street, and it’s more difficult to stay in touch with former colleagues as time goes by, he said.
And then there is that other thing. Money.
“Unfortunately, the industry always seems to get it wrong and they over-hire,” said Philip Keevil, 65, a former head of investment banking at S.G. Warburg & Co. and now a partner at New York-based advisory firm Compass Advisers LLP. “They are over-optimistic and then periodically throw large numbers out.”
Morale on Wall Street and London is “probably as bad, if not worse” than it has been in decades, said Keevil.
Wall Street bonuses are expected to fall in 2011 from the $128,530 average last year, DiNapoli, the state comptroller, said in October. Even so, when Goldman Sachs set aside 24 percent less to pay employees in the first nine months than in the same period last year, the amount, $10 billion, was equal to $292,836 for each of its 34,200 workers as of Sept. 30. That’s nearly six times the median household income in the U.S., where 49.1 million live in poverty, according to Census Bureau data.
Like we said, "nary a tear"..
Wyatt Laikind, 26, made three times as much in his first year out of college working at Citigroup Inc. as his single mother earned when he was growing up in western Massachusetts.
“It was like winning the lottery to get that job,” said Laikind, who worked as an associate on the New York-based bank’s high-yield credit-trading desk.
He got a job on Wall Street because he “was under the impression that it was a more meritocratic environment,” and “my hard work and intelligence would be paid off,” he said.
At first, he liked the excitement, he said. Then, after financial regulations curtailed proprietary trading, the job became “less appealing.” He said he didn’t like smiling at clients while having to figure out how to profit from them.
In July, after a vacation, he called his boss to quit, he said in an interview from Quito, Ecuador, where he is now working for Equitable Origin LLC, a start-up that offers a certification system for oil exploration. His salary is less than 5 percent of what he made at Citigroup, he lives with intermittent hot water, and he was robbed at knifepoint last month, he said.
“I feel happier on a daily basis,” Laikind said.
That was then. And this is now.
His tone was different in a later e-mail.
“I wasn’t brought up in luxury, so I like to think I can tough it out,” he wrote, describing the sagging mattress he slept on in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt to stay warm. “But I may have to give it up and try going back to finance soon.”
And that's just it: as Wall Street, long accustomed to the best in life, wakes up to the harsh realities of life on Main Street, it will be precisely these (in)voluntary defectors that will soon be some of the most vocal enemies of the old establishment that kept them paid, fed, and covered their expense accounts. Because if there is one thing that dies the hardest, it is old habits.
Moral of the story: know your bankers today - tomorrow they may well be the leaders of the new resistance...
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wait a second.. there's people on the other side too?
Run To Gold , Bitchez ...
BaBaBouy
I was out and about today and got some Gold ingots, some Silver ingots and some Gold coins.
Boy is Skyrim fun.
fuck all those goddamned bankers
those poor, poor bankers. some may actually have to make an honest living now.
greased up deaf guy
This is what kills me, no one bitched when the Farmers took it up the ass. Sure there were some concerts, still are, but no big protests.
Then factory workers took it up the ass, same results.
Now because people who never wanted to get their hands dirty can't get a fucking job, or lose their job, everyone has their panties in a bunch.
I say FUCK THEM ALL!
If the fucking assholes would have stepped up to the plate and supported all those who went before we would not be where we are today. But no everybody was happy smoking dope, drinking overpriced wine, becoming foodies, aquiring the trappings of wealth, paying to be attractive, and generally not giving a shit about the warning signs.
Meanwhile some of us have never recovered from the 80's.
Fuck all of you who didn't give a shit for the Farmers, for the Steel workers, from the Factory workers. You are just getting what you deserve.
can u tell us how u really feel?
i agree fuck all bankers and their bitch owned politicians...Silver ANd Gold dreams Bithcez...
Unfortunately the BANKERS and Billionaires Maggots OWN All the Politicos ...
This is why we are in a World Financial Crisis.
the people losing their jobs in enormous numbers is accelerating in the finance field. Once we reach 100,000 to 1,000,000 in NY and London - the 1/10 of 1% will turn over the 1%. you cant control all the people all the time!
ALL these people are ultimately a treasure trove of "WHISTLEBLOWERS" who know where all the dead bodies are buried to move up the food chain to blankfein and dimon
the cut and paste mortgage applications of Countrywide are the tip of the iceberg - the vast outreaches of the conspiracy cannot be controlled without payoffs and the whistleblower are out of range of continous payments within 12 months
the AG's know this in NY/ CA / DEL / MASS and others - obama cannot "control" his control fraud
it is too big and too many people !!!
thank you - GOD - for overwhelming greed
Booo Fucking Hoooo.. Their sole business model is to move paper around and skim off of labor that produces goods and services.. I hope WS (and banking) gets reduced to 2% of the economy (or less).. Where is should be!
I was just about to say...lol
Agreed. People's lives were just numbers and statistics to be used and manipulated for whatever gain could be had. Welccome to being a number fuckers.
the US Congress and Senate, whose conscience can be bought by the highest bidder
Succint !
Watching Pelosi and Boener's faces was all that was necessary on 60 Minuites. ! Dirty little dirtbags, everyone.
These people won't even recognize fresh dog shit on their noses !
can u tell us how u really feel?
i agree fuck all bankers and their bitch owned politicians...Silver ANd Gold dreams Bithcez...
"Fuck all of you who didn't give a shit for the Farmers, for the Steel workers, from the Factory workers. You are just getting what you deserve."
It's the way of the world Gully Foyle
folks wont get off their ass untill ASS reaches critical mass...
There still aren't enough...This morning on the oldies station, the morning jocks were making fun of OWSers, implying they were dirty, useless, violent etc...
(that's what Main Street is being fed by the Oligarchs)
however, belated apologies from the herd, GF....
now we have,
"Brady and 1,065 colleagues joined a wave of firings that has washed away more than 200,000 jobs in the global financial-services industry this year, eclipsing 174,000 in 2009"
but my solidarity doesn't extend that far becuase all I can think of them is..., "who will drink all the vodka cocktails???"
Yup, Greased this going to be bad for hookers and the blow industry.
"A Look At Wall Street From The "Other Side""
Do you mean from the arse side?
Yeah, kinda dark and stinky from that side.
Anybody else think the quotes/anecdotes are a little too concocted? Sure, she was watching mad men...oh yeah, I recall saying something about a sunset and hoping the sun doesn't set on MF global. Sounds like Templeton wrote this article...
This is crazy, Euro up on rumors ECB will cave and print? Fantasyland.
If you've been paying attention, you'd realize that the only thing that is keeping the markets above absolute zero is fantasy and printing.
What else is there?
How can you find a sollution for 60 years of fucked up politics?
This last decade, young people have been dreaming that they'll have it as good as the babyboomers. Babyboomers have on average 37 times as much as your average 30 year old. It's only now that they start to realize that dream is and was a pipe dream.
The next thing they still need to realize that the last decade was also a waste of their time. Oh well.... If they bought gold and silver they might still make it. If they bought every version of the iphones, every ipad version, 20000 apps, 50 inch screens in every room.... They're fucked.
Gold and silver... hmm...
Is there an app for that?
That's how extortion works, Dog. Float rumor... check, Artificially boost currency... check. Finalize with a call to Merkels office... pending... processing ... processing....
When I was a kid, Pluto was a planet, and there was a park, where those getting stomped by big banks, could go and hear the drum beats of a new horizon--a new revolution.
DormRoom
Homosexuality was a mental illness and women could be beaten. Oh drunk driving was no big deal.
And SNL was funny, so was Steve Martin.
You missed one there, just to get a dig into the Trav's of this world:
Steve Martin was black.
No, he was born poor and black...
Tragically, couldn't get that clip in good quality, so settled for the "you mean I'm staying this colour" one...
if you're white and calling other white people racist or even giving a shit then you are the problem. You are a fool and a tool.
There is NO OTHER GROUP I've ever witnessed call another member of their group a racist. Ever. instead I have watched shameless racism from them which they don't give a 2nd thought to.
White people who act like you do are punks and bitches.
breakwind
I hate you soooo much.
Already
Well, the italics mean that you can really, really trust him.
Knock off the SPAM, Saul... you Sheenys are always trying for a scam, yes?
My long term goal is to see the last of the criminals that produce nothing. Anything on a computer screen or printed on a piece of paper requires trust. And NOBODY CAN BE TRUSTED.
Thank you Wall Street and Washington.
'And that's just it: as Wall Street, long accustomed to the best in life, wakes up to the harsh realities of life on Main Street, it will be precisely these (in)voluntary defectors that will soon be some of the most vocal enemies of the old establishment that kept them paid, fed, and covered their expense accounts. Because if there is one thing that dies the hardest, it is old habits.'
Remains to be seen but that certainly is the logical conclusion. Too bad it had to come to this...
And they will make great witnesses if we can find any prosecutors.
I better take my meds I'm becoming delusional again.
Fuck them all
+10
Agreed. Fuck the other side.
NYPD is the 4th branch of the Israel Defense Forces. Bought and paid for.
"Retired Philadelphia police captain, Ray Lewis, seen above, detained illegally by a corrupt police department he describes as “Wall Street mercenaries”. "
"He knows he risks his life by coming out, in uniform, exposing American police as the enemy so many have known them to be for so long."
http://mycatbirdseat.com/2011/11/gordon-duff-a-tale-of-two-cops-in-cuffs/
No shit. 200,000 layoffs is only a good start. Plenty of fat yet to cut.
Let's see these people kicked out of the "meritocracy" use their "merits" to actually produce something.
You people are all missing something very important. Yes, the banking sector, along with Washington, is responsible for the economic mess we are in, however, not every person in banking and finance is evil. We want good honest bankers, they can help get things going in the right direction. What we need to do is investgate and prosecute the bad ones so that they go away and also set an example for others who would think of going down the same path. I wish Obummer would direct Holder to do his job...just ask Bill Black who was the special prosecutor during the S&L crisis in the early 90's. I feel bad for any honest and hard working soul who is out of work. I support anyone who gets screwed by corrupt people. I do not support greedy corrupt bankers nor do I support smelly people living in squalor and protesting that they should be given something to which no one is entitled (freebies paid for by others). If our government got back in the business of creating opportunity instead of class warfare, we might be able to work our way out of this mess (someday!)
"We want good honest bankers" We already have Disneyland.
Since the "intermediary" business in founded in the excrement at the bottom of an outhouse, and is gussied up as ice cream, how pray tell do we get to "honest" bankers.
Who's going to eat the shit ?
I agree with you on most of that, and I can feel for some of these people on a human level. Or if they are douchebags, I at least feel for their families.
But on a macro level, the financial industry had grown way way to large by 2008 and was/is crowding out other sectors of the economy. Money is being sucked into bogus financial gimmicks instead of being invested productively. So on a macro level, the whole industry needs to keep shrinking for a long time in my book.
We need to return to boring, honest bankers lending prudently to prudent people. Banking needs to be boring again. It shouldn't seem like an exciting, fast-paced career to ambitious 23-year-olds. They should think, "why the hell would I want to go into banking?"
fuck their families too...their wives are self-obsessed cunts and their kids are insufferable, spoilt little brats
honest bankers =Oxymoron
"Here's your bonus this year, Dabolina."
"What?"
"Yes I know it resembles a turd."
"Resembles? It's a turd!"
"It's still a bonus, Dabolina."
Mrs Blankfein leaves her bath: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VN2KRxTdjE
LMAO - hope Mr. Blankfein was close...
Boo hoooo, Reiner has to retire with soft hands to his maple syrup vinyard and unfortunately spend time with his kids. What pity!
Fucking pathetic, I hope he doesn't get a flat tire -- he might need more therapy!
Widowmaker
Clearly that vineyard would be either on another planet or in an alternate dimension, as here Maple Syrup comes from trees.
dude's on a roll...lol!!!!
Maple flavor grapes don't sound very appetizing.
John Brady, co-head of MF Global Inc.’s Chicago office, was having a vodka cocktail at the Ritz- Carlton in Naples, Florida, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, on the day his company reported its largest-ever quarterly loss.
This guy, like the rest of the pretenders on Wall Street, should be glad simply for the fact that he even made it this far. Instead of sipping on vodkas downstairs at the Ritz he really should be upstairs cleaning the piss stains from the toilets and vaccuming up the pubic hair. It is worthless POS' like this that have ruined things for everyone else.
Welcome to the world of unemployment!
Welcome to the 99%. Drum circle and ganga @ 4:20 bitches
What a sad, sad story. Everyone in my house is crying. Even my pet chihuahua is crying.
Hold me!
Must be why everyone is trying to get a job at GS, a.k.a., the soon to be "last bank standing."
Noon Rumors "ECB to PRINT" :)))
Excuse me while I shed a tear for all those jobs lost in the financial sector. sarc/
This is what happens when the financial sector becomes so profitable that theoretical mathmaticians and quantum physicist are drawn into the fray. Is it just coincidence that bernanke, draghi, and papademos all went to MIT?
We should have a top 10 most and least deserving of bonuses list on this Blog (not that TD isn't busy enough) and then have a good laugh when we compare this to the bonuses they get.
The biggest take the money and run criminals should be afraid. I mean afraid for their lives and families and homes when they take the blood money. I say torches and pitchforks but the peasant uprising needs data on who stole the most.
welcome to the world of lagging indicators. get cozy...you're gonna be here a while.
Time for these paper-pushing fucknuts to rethink the value of their labor - Bullish.
Hey, picking up the phone and making a call is hard work <sarc>
I'm really touched by those hardship stories, really. Still they had few years of good bonuses and they were supposed to save.
The guy working in factory with 40k salary can make only 1.6 mln in his life time and doesn't have any savings. He cannot even afford 2 bedroom house, time for them to get government retraining program and learn how to unplug toillets or clean up cesspools. They helped us to get to that shit hole just get taste of it.
Anecdotal story from this week at the investment bank casino for which I work as a contract (read: NON) employee.
A lady I (formerly) worked with was on vacation for the past two weeks. On November 7, word came down from above that a member of our team was to be "displaced". However...the manager of the team says he was forbidden from telling this person that her job was gone. So, there she was - on vacation, spending money she probably otherwise wouldn't have spent had she known of the events that were transpiring in her absence.
I came in yesterday and was told of all of this. I guess they told her either over the phone or early in the morning, prior to my arrival.
"Thank you for your years of dedication and service to our company. Now kindly accept this kick in the teeth and please, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
BTW, my position is likely going to be eliminated at the end of the year. And my partner is still unemployed after 2-1/2 years, with exhausted unemployment benefits.
thanks for that anecdotal addition to the lexicon of corporate doublespeak. For several years now, I've been committed to writing a modernized version of Lord of the Flies, but the daily news from the financial sector has by far outstripped my capacity to imagine acts of unspeakable savagery, so I have had to put the project in hiatus...
however, should things slacken off, in a future "kinder and gentler" era of human existence, and I can pick up the traces again, I will certainly apply your term 'displaced' in suitable context, something akin to a large pot of bubbling water, I should think, and a number of cheery, bone ornamented enthusiasts, dressed of course in bespoke fashion!
Some of us in these parts refer to displacement as 'getting The Hope And The Change'. We giggle a bit when it happens to someone who called us racists for not voting for that shit.
Reminds me of that joke:
"We're not fucking dinosaurs, we'll just come after their jobs if we're kicked out of these".
Irony strikes when unemployment is 40% in your age bracket, and Main street views "major financial Corporation" as "lying sociopathic scumbag".
Still, there's always the entertainment industry...
Oh. Wait.
Shares in Thomas Cook have closed down 75% after it announced it was in talks with banks about increasing the amount of money it can borrow.
The travel firm said it had seen a "deterioration of trading", due to political unrest in Egypt and Tunisia and floods in Thailand.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15832438
Please note that that 75% down is from 80% down from 2010 [i.e. total about 90-95% down from April last year], and the CEO left with a massive golden parachute just before the recent troubles. Classy.
Expect more: a pyramid scheme doesn't work if there's nothing funneling upwards.
There are only so many fools on the planet -- those that understand exponential functions -- let them hear!
FUCK THESE MOTHER FUCKING FUCKS! Until I see blood flowing like a river from their assholes, I will not be satisfied. They willingly and eagerly raped the rest of the world, as well as to generations yet unborn. Technically, they are no better than pedophiles. But I must thank TD for the story. This, along with MF going down, just made my holidays a lot more merrier. Cheers!!!
Dude, I like your style. A little abrasive, you'll get junked by the mormon crowd here...but I tend to agree. In fact, I'm convinced that we will see the "fruits of their labors." Gawd I love ZH. I wished I'd a thought of it first. http://thecivillibertarian.blogspot.com/2011/11/those-who-make-peaceful-...
TAKE THEM TO THE IRON MAIDEN
Phone sterilizers.
Insight: Farm belt rage over MF Global could chill markets
http://tiny.cc/0vhl5
Double long pitchforks bitchez!
GS's gift to US farmers will keep on giving. Double spit roast: Monsanto (looked after by GS, by the way, esp. since GS holds the premier Bio/food conference each year) on one side, GS lead commodity hijnks on the other.
It took the brilliant minds of Goldman Sachs to realize the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there's value, there's money to be made. In 1991, Goldman bankers, led by their prescient president Gary Cohn, came up with a new kind of investment product, a derivative that tracked 24 raw materials, from precious metals and energy to coffee, cocoa, cattle, corn, hogs, soy, and wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known henceforth as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI).
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/27/how_goldman_sachs_creat...
Long term thinking there. Just like the 30's
How's that drought working out in the south west? Yep, still going well - so no hedging & environmental factors closing in, and GS has Monsanto shafting you on one side, the major players like Walmart screw you every time [Here's a link, from a very popular little site, although we could go adult on this] and to add insult to injury, tough immigration laws are back firing [Georgia, June. Alabama September].
I could go on: but at this point, it appears that Republican governers and GS & co have conspired to create a perfect storm. Have fun.
//It took the brilliant minds of Goldman Sachs to realize the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there's value, there's money to be made. In 1991, Goldman bankers, led by their prescient president Gary Cohn, came up with a new kind of investment product, a derivative that tracked 24 raw materials, from precious metals and energy to coffee, cocoa, cattle, corn, hogs, soy, and wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known henceforth as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI).//
This, I believe they call, "creating value for shareholders" ...whether or not financial explosions and unforseen consequences for the common man occur during that process is irrelevant. For the masters of the universe, the ends always justify the means.
The Unemployed Bankers Lament:
Buddy can you spare a bonus ?
End the FIRE economy. I hope this continues. There's someting very wrong with this world when banksters, getting paid huge salaries and bonuses for shuffling other peoples money around, make much much more than folks such as ER doctors. You know, those people who make the world a better place by actually doing something productive. Such as saving lives. Though they're overpaid too, but that's a different story.
Yo, if it's YOUR life that's being saved, how overpaid do ya want'em to be? Check your premises.
But, is it truly Wall Street and the financial industry shrinking, or just increasing concentration of power, control, and wealth in fewer hands? In a quest for central control and ultimately ownership of everything, this culling of the elite herd must be part of the process. None of them are creating much of true economic value or contributing much to economic growth. Therefore, the only way for those remaining to achieve their ultimate goal is to eliminate some of their own, thus grabbing a bigger piece of an ever shrinking economic pie.
0.1% of 1% screwing the other 0.9%. Gotta love this shyte
Yes, this is exactly what I was waiting for! When the uber-wealthy start to turn on the marginally wealthy, and the marginally wealthy start to join the call in removing the economic parasites and oligarchs - happy day!
Capitalistic cannibalism
//None of them are creating much of true economic value or contributing much to economic growth//
But Rush says these people are job creators and there is a socialist-islamofascist-atheist-secular-marxist conspiracy afoot and we have to have no regulation so Goldman Sachs can create jobs.
You America hater!
Finally a good news story on ZH.
They should join OWS.
Wall Street devours its own children.
7/11 called, THEY'RE HIRING!
I am glad all these scum bags are loosing their jobs. Banker, is that a real skill anyways? Anyone can count money, even a 3 year old.
Hmm, so lying, cheating and stealing aren't really useful skills? Have to write that down in my diary...