We eat what we kill.

Mod Note (Andy): #TBT Throwback Thursday - this was originally posted on 4/30/10. To see all of our top content from the past, click here.

The following e-mail has been going around on the Street recently. I thought I might share it:

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?

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWE4YmE2YjhmMzgzODJjMTY3NTA1ND…

 

Couldn't have said it better.

"Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."
 

That is fantastic. 10 points to whomever the author is. Can you imagine the reaction if Jamie Dimon published this on the front page of the WSJ with his smiling portrait next to it?

- Capt K - "Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, bait the hook with prestige." - Paul Graham
 

If I was from Jersey, I'd be fist pumping right now....fuck it I'll do it anyway.

-------------------------------------------------------- "I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcom
 

This needs to be on the front page. This is what WSO is about.

GET IT DONE PATRICK!

-------------------------------------------------------- "I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcom
 
This is on dealbreaker. Personally, I whole heartedly agree. Very interesting the reactions on that site though.

Why the hell do non-finance types post on dealbreaker? Idiots.

-------------------------------------------------------- "I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcom
 
Best Response

Personally, I must disagree. I find these posts/emails/thoughts so sophomoric, egocentric and ill-informed. Everything about the email is just utterly ridiculous. I could tear it apart line by line but why waste the time or energy. If I had to guess, this email wasn't written by a highly educated, intelligent and sophisticated financier but rather a glorified salesman that happens to work in finance; while I could be wrong, I hope I'm not.

Its not surprising that when I systematically checked all of the above posters user profiles, basically everyone was a "Prospective Monkey". Stop mentally masturbating the dream of being a hitter, and saying stuff like "awesome", "props", "OH SHITTTTT" and "beautiful" in reaction to "taking on the man". Is this a finance forum or a 7th grade notebook with Anarchy doodles scribbled in between class notes.

 

I think the author has a point when he reminds us that, if high paying jobs in finance that no one else wants go away, then would-have-been bankers will simply compete for the next most prestigious/well-paid/... jobs.

 

Man, Obama is doing what he has to do on this one. He doesn't want to see Wall Street crumble, he just wants to curb the abuses that have been going on.

Furthermore, the IB talent pool would not move on to pedestrian jobs like teaching and lanscaping. The people who would have to worry are consulting, Big 4 Accounting, commercial banking.

 

Well, I came from the future to tell you that Obama made Trump be ellected. I love Trump, but this is clear that how much deperate america has become with "what Obama had to do".

Obama broke the economy, and it looks like people in WSO sometimes are clueless about society and economy. At least it wasn't clinton who won. Lets see if the world could have a great america, at least.

 

Yeah I agree with this - it is pretty douchy but people are like "People on Wall Street have no tangible skills" - this is the most asinine comment ever. Especially when politicians who suck D for a living and lie constantly are the ones making it. I'm glad a couple of senators understood hedging during the GS breakdown (FYI I worked at a lesser rival, they pay the same to juniors though so no grudges)

Like that senator from Montana who was like - if you asked me about farming, I could explain farming, so why can't you do that with structured financial products??? DAAAAAR. Farming is humanity's FIRST industry, well maybe after hunting, fishing, and slaying. And they ARE explaining it, your associates degree from Devry in business planning might be holding you back from grasping these concepts.

Its like dude...I could not know shit...in fact, I could not have read a single book about what you are doing...but we're smart enough to learn your job and in a month be better at it than you in every way...I'll go back to college and get a photoengraving degree and take your job, mister grimy politician.

My friends who are teachers always joke about how easy their jobs are - their biggest concern is getting back home by 3 pm.

THREE PM IS THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY IN TRADING

 

If Wall Streeters were so smart they wouldn't be so reckless. The negligence of the subprime lenders is criminal. The negligence of the banks that peddled those junk bonds as A rated securities is even more criminal. I'm not faulting Goldman for hedging its risks-any smart bank should. But seriously, did nobody really think to ask "Wait, we didn't check their credit, we don't know what their income is, and we don't know how much the collateral's worth-is this really a good credit risk?"

One more thing-don't sell products you don't understand. I personally would never buy anything from a salesperson that doesn't know their product inside out, upside down, forwards and backwards, and every which other way.

"We are lawyers! We sue people! Occasionally, we get aggressive and garnish wages, but WE DO NOT ABDUCT!" -Boston Legal-
 
holymonkey:

One more thing-don't sell products you don't understand. I personally would never buy anything from a salesperson that doesn't know their product inside out, upside down, forwards and backwards, and every which other way.

The problem with this line of thought is that you only realize you don't understand the product when something has gone wrong.

 
holymonkey:

One more thing-don't sell products you don't understand. I personally would never buy anything from a salesperson that doesn't know their product inside out, upside down, forwards and backwards, and every which other way.

I know I don't truly understand any piece of technology more sophisticated than a lightbulb. Car salesmen don't know how to put together an engine. TV salesmen don't understand how plasma screens works. The American Airlines travel agent can't explain how a plane flies. And mortgage brokers don't understand how CDOs work. I wouldn't expect them to. A very basic understanding maybe, but not all the details.

It's not reasonable to expect sales people to understand everything about what they sell. That's just the consequence of advanced products (financial or otherwise).

 
holymonkey:
If Wall Streeters were so smart they wouldn't be so reckless. The negligence of the subprime lenders is criminal. The negligence of the banks that peddled those junk bonds as A rated securities is even more criminal. I'm not faulting Goldman for hedging its risks-any smart bank should. But seriously, did nobody really think to ask "Wait, we didn't check their credit, we don't know what their income is, and we don't know how much the collateral's worth-is this really a good credit risk?"

One more thing-don't sell products you don't understand. I personally would never buy anything from a salesperson that doesn't know their product inside out, upside down, forwards and backwards, and every which other way.

They didn't check credit, etc because they were selling off the risky assets and earning a premium for securitizing such products... It was just too bad that when shit hit the fan they still were holding onto some

They DID understand their products, ratings agencies didn't... But I do agree with you on a moral standpoint (although that wasn't stated in your argument), bankers had to know that the shit they were passing off to investors wasn't going to turn into rainbows and jelly beans

 

You wouldn't buy a car? What about a house? I'm pretty sure there are a lot of car salesmen and realtors who couldn't break down the workings of an internal combustion engine or explain the finer points of carpentry, masonry and plumbing. Maybe the buyer should shoulder some of the blame for making an uninformed purchase. Caveat emptor, bro.

 

So here it goes then. Why I think this is a pathetic ramblings of an uneducated douche bag.

We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money....Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose...well now the market crapped out....well here we are

The first two paragraphs make finance sound unsophisticated. Its almost as if the writer is conceding all it was is a giant bet that lost. This makes finance sound simplistic while making the traders that lost come off as unintelligent gamblers that ran out of luck. He is implying that traders were just playing a game and lost and people should stop whining about it. Its asinine for 2 reasons. One, finance is not that trivial. Two, if it is, then your'e admitting that traders aren't a cut above the rest, rather people that was given the keys to a car that they didn't know how to drive.

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.

Yes, certainty you are going to apply your work ethic to a non-financially lucrative field. As if its your ethos driving you to work so hard is not the money. Laughable.

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.

It's presumptions to assume that the same skill set to banking applies to teaching and manual labor. Just because you can sell junk bonds don't mean you can connect and educate children. Nor does it imply that you would be capable of doing manual labor for shitty pay. Not to mention if the author would to take on such low paying professions I'm sure he would do all of the overtime off the clock as he implies.

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.

No one is getting a free ride of a bankers back. If a banker is hiring a service provider they are working hard for their money and usually at a low wage. Seeing as though outrageous bonus levels are a relatively new thing, and that both wall street and main street have been doing just fine for the past several decades, I'm pretty sure that the well being of the non finance professionals, whether white or blue collar will be just fine.

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.

Again presumptuously implying that he will knock the middle class down a level. What does that even mean. The tens of thousands of traders are going displace the tens of millions of middle class workers who will just become magically poor.

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?

Yes, you are so intelligent. Smart enough to come up with a nonsensical rant that reeks of douche bag yet does not provide any factual support and merely offers outrageous assumptions. I find it so disgusting how some people in finance are so pathetically narcissistic. Finance isn't the best of the best. That would be engineers, doctors, innovators, entrepreneurs or those that follow their true passions regardless of the pay. Not hating on finance, as I'm in it, rather pointing out that some people in finance think they are god's gift to civilization when they are nothing of the sort.

Stop drinking our own Koolaid.

 

Wow... I disagree with the initial email but this post is even more stupid.

ke18sb:
So here it goes then. Why I think this is a pathetic ramblings of an uneducated douche bag.
We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money....Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose...well now the market crapped out....well here we are

The first two paragraphs make finance sound unsophisticated. Its almost as if the writer is conceding all it was is a giant bet that lost. This makes finance sound simplistic while making the traders that lost come off as unintelligent gamblers that ran out of luck. He is implying that traders were just playing a game and lost and people should stop whining about it. Its asinine for 2 reasons. One, finance is not that trivial. Two, if it is, then your'e admitting that traders aren't a cut above the rest, rather people that was given the keys to a car that they didn't know how to drive.

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.

Yes, certainty you are going to apply your work ethic to a non-financially lucrative field. As if its your ethos driving you to work so hard is not the money. Laughable.

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.

It's presumptions to assume that the same skill set to banking applies to teaching and manual labor. Just because you can sell junk bonds don't mean you can connect and educate children. Nor does it imply that you would be capable of doing manual labor for shitty pay. Not to mention if the author would to take on such low paying professions I'm sure he would do all of the overtime off the clock as he implies.

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.

No one is getting a free ride of a bankers back. If a banker is hiring a service provider they are working hard for their money and usually at a low wage. Seeing as though outrageous bonus levels are a relatively new thing, and that both wall street and main street have been doing just fine for the past several decades, I'm pretty sure that the well being of the non finance professionals, whether white or blue collar will be just fine.

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.

Again presumptuously implying that he will knock the middle class down a level. What does that even mean. The tens of thousands of traders are going displace the tens of millions of middle class workers who will just become magically poor.

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?

Yes, you are so intelligent. Smart enough to come up with a nonsensical rant that reeks of douche bag yet does not provide any factual support and merely offers outrageous assumptions. I find it so disgusting how some people in finance are so pathetically narcissistic. Finance isn't the best of the best. That would be engineers, doctors, innovators, entrepreneurs or those that follow their true passions regardless of the pay. Not hating on finance, as I'm in it, rather pointing out that some people in finance think they are god's gift to civilization when they are nothing of the sort.

Stop drinking our own Koolaid.

ke18sb:
So here it goes then. Why I think this is a pathetic ramblings of an uneducated douche bag.
We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money....Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose...well now the market crapped out....well here we are

The first two paragraphs make finance sound unsophisticated. Its almost as if the writer is conceding all it was is a giant bet that lost. This makes finance sound simplistic while making the traders that lost come off as unintelligent gamblers that ran out of luck. He is implying that traders were just playing a game and lost and people should stop whining about it. Its asinine for 2 reasons. One, finance is not that trivial. Two, if it is, then your'e admitting that traders aren't a cut above the rest, rather people that was given the keys to a car that they didn't know how to drive.

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.

Yes, certainty you are going to apply your work ethic to a non-financially lucrative field. As if its your ethos driving you to work so hard is not the money. Laughable.

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.

It's presumptions to assume that the same skill set to banking applies to teaching and manual labor. Just because you can sell junk bonds don't mean you can connect and educate children. Nor does it imply that you would be capable of doing manual labor for shitty pay. Not to mention if the author would to take on such low paying professions I'm sure he would do all of the overtime off the clock as he implies.

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.

No one is getting a free ride of a bankers back. If a banker is hiring a service provider they are working hard for their money and usually at a low wage. Seeing as though outrageous bonus levels are a relatively new thing, and that both wall street and main street have been doing just fine for the past several decades, I'm pretty sure that the well being of the non finance professionals, whether white or blue collar will be just fine.

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.

Again presumptuously implying that he will knock the middle class down a level. What does that even mean. The tens of thousands of traders are going displace the tens of millions of middle class workers who will just become magically poor.

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?

Yes, you are so intelligent. Smart enough to come up with a nonsensical rant that reeks of douche bag yet does not provide any factual support and merely offers outrageous assumptions. I find it so disgusting how some people in finance are so pathetically narcissistic. Finance isn't the best of the best. That would be engineers, doctors, innovators, entrepreneurs or those that follow their true passions regardless of the pay. Not hating on finance, as I'm in it, rather pointing out that some people in finance think they are god's gift to civilization when they are nothing of the sort.

Stop drinking our own Koolaid.

good points. I liked it and im not a prospective monkey. I liked it because its amusing, a little juvenile and because im personnally sick of moron ppl asking me if i feel responsible for what happened., as if we were all responsible. If the populus wants to simplify us to such an extent as crooks and gamblers, then why not respond by an eqully juvenile rant...?

 
ke18sb:
So here it goes then. Why I think this is a pathetic ramblings of an uneducated douche bag.
We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money....Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose...well now the market crapped out....well here we are

The first two paragraphs make finance sound unsophisticated. Its almost as if the writer is conceding all it was is a giant bet that lost. This makes finance sound simplistic while making the traders that lost come off as unintelligent gamblers that ran out of luck. He is implying that traders were just playing a game and lost and people should stop whining about it. Its asinine for 2 reasons. One, finance is not that trivial. Two, if it is, then your'e admitting that traders aren't a cut above the rest, rather people that was given the keys to a car that they didn't know how to drive.

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.

Yes, certainty you are going to apply your work ethic to a non-financially lucrative field. As if its your ethos driving you to work so hard is not the money. Laughable.

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.

It's presumptions to assume that the same skill set to banking applies to teaching and manual labor. Just because you can sell junk bonds don't mean you can connect and educate children. Nor does it imply that you would be capable of doing manual labor for shitty pay. Not to mention if the author would to take on such low paying professions I'm sure he would do all of the overtime off the clock as he implies.

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.

No one is getting a free ride of a bankers back. If a banker is hiring a service provider they are working hard for their money and usually at a low wage. Seeing as though outrageous bonus levels are a relatively new thing, and that both wall street and main street have been doing just fine for the past several decades, I'm pretty sure that the well being of the non finance professionals, whether white or blue collar will be just fine.

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.

Again presumptuously implying that he will knock the middle class down a level. What does that even mean. The tens of thousands of traders are going displace the tens of millions of middle class workers who will just become magically poor.

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?

Yes, you are so intelligent. Smart enough to come up with a nonsensical rant that reeks of douche bag yet does not provide any factual support and merely offers outrageous assumptions. I find it so disgusting how some people in finance are so pathetically narcissistic. Finance isn't the best of the best. That would be engineers, doctors, innovators, entrepreneurs or those that follow their true passions regardless of the pay. Not hating on finance, as I'm in it, rather pointing out that some people in finance think they are god's gift to civilization when they are nothing of the sort.

Stop drinking our own Koolaid.

good points. I liked it and im not a prospective monkey. I liked it because its amusing, a little juvenile and because im personnally sick of moron ppl asking me if i feel responsible for what happened., as if we were all responsible. If the populus wants to simplify us to such an extent as crooks and gamblers, then why not respond by an eqully juvenile rant...?

 

well said. i'm glad somebody had the cajones to say it (too bad it's anonymous though, although i can certainly understand and don't blame the writer for staying anonymous).

the one thing that he/she missed that i think should be added is that, during normal economy, the tax revenues generated off of financial services business activities and people working in finance are enormous. it was us financing larger than our fair share of the social services and public infrastructures that the "average joes" enjoyed for years. it's not a surprise that NYC is facing multi-billion dollar budget deficits this year.

also, bankers, traders, asset managers, etc. have been some of the largest benefactors of charities and non-profit organizations.

this is exactly my problem with the american society today: people love to point fingers and blame others for their problems. americans don't like to take hard looks at themselves and place some of the blame on themselves.

as far as i know, no "banker" has ever pointed a gun at someone's head and said "your entire family makes $70k a year combined, but you better sign this loan to buy that $2 million house or i'm gonna bust some caps"

 

I could teach 500 3rd graders and replace the jobs of 12 teachers myself - thats sort of an exaggeration but seriously its not hard to be a teacher. Trust me, bottom 25% of my HS class is all about going into teaching. I am friends with a lot of them, they know they aren't smart and they don't care about their jobs. They always joke about how they are 'dumb enough to be teachers' because of how frustrating it would be if they were Type A go getters.

 

And Wall Street is more like you take what other people kill, convert it into paper, print a whole bunch of it, then eat a chunk of the kill you've been trusted with.

"We are lawyers! We sue people! Occasionally, we get aggressive and garnish wages, but WE DO NOT ABDUCT!" -Boston Legal-
 

The comment about not buying something from a salesman that doesn't understand what he is selling is totally backward. Of course you would buy a financial product the salesman didn't understand, especially if you felt as though you understood it better than he did.

That is the entire ethos of Wall Street and trading - anyone that enters into a financial trade feels like he is the smart guy in the room, that he understands the product he is buying and its outlook better than the seller. After all, he must - if he didn't why would he be buying?

If somebody is selling something he doesn't understand and you feel he has undervalued it, that's not called fraud - that's called blood in the water. Clearly the buyers felt they were purchasing something they understood better than the seller - just turns out they were wrong. Oops.

Every transaction is a bet - that you'll win and your counterparty will lose. So clearly you hope your counterparty is as dumb as possible. Everyone involved in these complex mortgage deals were sophisticated investors that understand these dynamics. And if they didn't... well as the saying goes, there is dumb money at every table and if you don't know who it is - it's you.

- Capt K - "Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, bait the hook with prestige." - Paul Graham
 
CaptK:
The comment about not buying something from a salesman that doesn't understand what he is selling is totally backward. Of course you would buy a financial product the salesman didn't understand, especially if you felt as though you understood it better than he did.

That is the entire ethos of Wall Street and trading - anyone that enters into a financial trade feels like he is the smart guy in the room, that he understands the product he is buying and its outlook better than the seller. After all, he must - if he didn't why would he be buying?

If somebody is selling something he doesn't understand and you feel he has undervalued it, that's not called fraud - that's called blood in the water. Clearly the buyers felt they were purchasing something they understood better than the seller - just turns out they were wrong. Oops.

Every transaction is a bet - that you'll win and your counterparty will lose. So clearly you hope your counterparty is as dumb as possible. Everyone involved in these complex mortgage deals were sophisticated investors that understand these dynamics. And if they didn't... well as the saying goes, there is dumb money at every table and if you don't know who it is - it's you.

Which makes the basic premise of finance a gamble.

Having seen the Great Recession and having lost a bit of money myself, I for one will never be buying any financial instrument that isn't guaranteed.

"We are lawyers! We sue people! Occasionally, we get aggressive and garnish wages, but WE DO NOT ABDUCT!" -Boston Legal-
 
holymonkey:

Which makes the basic premise of finance a gamble.

Having seen the Great Recession and having lost a bit of money myself, I for one will never be buying any financial instrument that isn't guaranteed.

I'd say everything in life is a gamble. No future events have 100% certainty. Finance is a way of managing that inevitable risk. Even guaranteed products are only as good as the guarantor. I mean look at Vallejo, California municipal bonds... they were guaranteed by the full faith and credit of that city, but that didn't work out so hot.... Or Greece - their guarantee isn't quite as meaningful as it used to be.

Plus there's the risk/reward trade off. Investors are rewarded for taking risk. Otherwise you get a portfolio of t-bills that get eaten away by inflation. Even something like a house could be considered a financial asset. You have to be able to accept a certain level of risk in order to make it in this world.

 
holymonkey:
Which makes the basic premise of finance a gamble.
No, rather "which makes prices reveal information". Calling finance a gamble is too easy.

Also, why did the industry become so "bloated"? Industries just don't grow out of the blue. The MBS industry depended on skewed regulatory incentives. Are financiers to blame if they took advantage of that opportunity? Should they have avoided the subprime bandwagon for moral reasons (if only they knew about the incoming trainwreck)?

There are very legitimate reasons for why finance exists in the first place. Transferring wealth through time, capital allocation,... While there is a good case for tackling moral hazard and contagion risk, I don't see the rationale for banker bashing.

The only legitimate argument has its roots in political philosophy; the idea that it's simply wrong to have people make 20 times Joe Sixpack's salary. I can understand why some people would think that, but then why would we accept that Tiger Woods make 50m a year while slaying call girls?

 

I have a friend who wants to be a high school counselor (her dream job). She graduated from a very good public school @ one of the wealthiest communities in the US. She finished high school with 3.8 - 3.9 unweighted GPA. Her sophomore year in college she thought US was the largest country in the world by area. She graduated college with 3.7+. True story I swear.

Out of all the teachers I've had, only one made a true impact on me (US History). Funny thing is, now he is in finance (wealth management).

 

Have you guys ever considered that you're being punked?

Yes, this is an over-the-top viewpoint of what some folks on Wall Street may feel, but it's no less hyperbolic than what Stephen Colbert or Borat does with neo-conservatives. Those of you who are nodding your heads in agreement are being had on a punchline that the original author of this email likely intended. The fact that so many of you guys are even agreeing to this is what the author wants - it's meant to incite and to make you guys look like complete douchebags to everyone else who isn't on Wall Street - the more you guys voice your support for this kind of sentiment, the worse you will come across without even realizing it.

It's a Gordon Gekko caricature (if that is even possible - and a fictional character no less), taking the smugness, nihilism, arrogance, presumption and self-importance to a more extreme level than reality. It's taking every single character trait people HATE about Wall Street and encapsulating it (a little to neatly) into an email.

Parody is at its most effective when the intended target doesn't even realize that they're being parodied.

Alex Chu www.mbaapply.com
 
MBAApply:

Have you guys ever considered that you're being punked?

Yes, this is an over-the-top viewpoint of what some folks on Wall Street may feel, but it's no less hyperbolic than what Stephen Colbert or Borat does with neo-conservatives. Those of you who are nodding your heads in agreement are being had on a punchline that the original author of this email likely intended. The fact that so many of you guys are even agreeing to this is what the author wants - it's meant to incite and to make you guys look like complete douchebags to everyone else who isn't on Wall Street - the more you guys voice your support for this kind of sentiment, the worse you will come across without even realizing it.

It's a Gordon Gekko caricature (if that is even possible - and a fictional character no less), taking the smugness, nihilism, arrogance, presumption and self-importance to a more extreme level than reality. It's taking every single character trait people HATE about Wall Street and encapsulating it (a little to neatly) into an email.

Parody is at its most effective when the intended target doesn't even realize that they're being parodied.

Since this thread was revived, time to revive this comment.

The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd.
 
jtbbdxbnycmad:
MBAApply:
Have you guys ever considered that you're being punked?Yes, this is an over-the-top viewpoint of what some folks on Wall Street may feel, but it's no less hyperbolic than what Stephen Colbert or Borat does with neo-conservatives. Those of you who are nodding your heads in agreement are being had on a punchline that the original author of this email likely intended. The fact that so many of you guys are even agreeing to this is what the author wants - it's meant to incite and to make you guys look like complete douchebags to everyone else who isn't on Wall Street - the more you guys voice your support for this kind of sentiment, the worse you will come across without even realizing it.It's a Gordon Gekko caricature (if that is even possible - and a fictional character no less), taking the smugness, nihilism, arrogance, presumption and self-importance to a more extreme level than reality. It's taking every single character trait people HATE about Wall Street and encapsulating it (a little to neatly) into an email.Parody is at its most effective when the intended target doesn't even realize that they're being parodied.

Since this thread was revived, time to revive this comment.

Thank the lord for this comment. Imbeciles. +1

 

Obviously main street is outraged. This is when we show how much smarter we are by nodding our heads, saying sorry, accepting some half-shit reform and moving on with our lives...business pretty much as usual. Getting angry and insulting the majority of americans is a great way of getting a big dick in the ass.

 

Who cares if Main Street is outraged? 50% pay 0 Fed Income Taxes.

The whole issue boils down to 2 causes:

1) Moral Hazard. Regulation ain't gonna do shit as long as the financial service firms know in the back of their minds that if they royally fk up, big brotha is coming.

2) Zero skin in the game. Of course rating agencies didn't work - they got paid by the wrong people. Of course there is populist outrage. Its win win for them. Don't have money in the game, jealous of success. I

And the email was balling.

And yall might want to open up your knowledge baskets cuz imma gonna keep droppin wisdom in them.

__________________________ if you ain't first, you last
 

@MBAApply - Every joke/parody/sarcasm has some truth to it. As self-righteous, oblivious and borderline ignorant that writer makes Bankers look , there is alot of truth to what he says. If Alice in Wonderland (Obama) brings down Wall Street, he's hurting Main Street more than he is hurting any seasoned Banker. Say what you want about Bankers but we know how to work long hours, come up with fancy speeches to sell a product for more than it's worth and let's face it unless you're working as a financial analyst at some bottom of the barrel community bank, you had to have graduated with a decent degree from a decent school.

Obviously wall St has always made Bankers/Traders seem like they are the smartest people on earth to justify the salaries. How else would you explain a 28 year old making half a mil bc he knows how to buy low and sell high?! Or paying a 23 yr old 70k a year to plug numbers into excel and run to Starbucks all day/night when his diploma hasn't even been printed yet. But as the person who wrote that rant stated, when a banker eats, everybody eats. I am far from being an 8-figure a year hot shot and even I tip extremely generously, have a maid, grocery delivery guy, am on a first name basis with the shoe girls at Saks and have a dog walker. I have helped pay for family members' tuition, soccer lessons, you name it. And when the earth quake hit Haiti, every last person in my department donated at least $500 simply bc one of the client service girls is haitian. I am grateful to have a job that allows me enough financial freedom to help others so I do. So imagine how many little fish are eating off the earnings of a Big fish like Fabrice Tourre or Andrew Hall?

I know 6 guys who left banking after Lehman died and they literally waltzed right into McKinsey, Apple, Accenture, Bain, etc And out of those 6, 4 of them had positions created for them with 100k + base salaries. Who do you think that hurt? Main Street. In order for a company like Accenture to make room for a $120k+ comp, that's 3- $40k positions that will either be eliminated or not filled to begin with.

The reason why I liked that rant is bc someone is finally showing what would really happen to Main Street is wall St comes crumbling down.. America has fallen into Obama's trap. He's yapping on and on about Wall Street to distract from the fact that he's less than stellar as a president. Does Wall Street need reform? Absolutely. We choked on our own Kool-Aid. But hammering down on us completely, won't fix anything.

 

@moneyneversleeps

Your point brings up an interesting question, if your premise is in fact correct, that the success of main st is dependent on the success of wall st (which I disagree with to a degree), doesn't that mean that the industry itself is too powerful, or in other words too big to fail. Isn't that part of the very root of the argument for financial reform. Why should one industry, in this case finance, have such a large sphere of influence that if it fails everyone fails as well.

In finance speak, you're implying that the American economy is a very unbalanced portfolio. Thus we need to reallocate our investments (industries) to mitigate our risk. We need to practice risk management and proper portfolio allocation, tenants of intelligent finance, to ensure the lasting success of the American economy. Whether you realize it or not, you're arguing for financial reform.

 
ke18sb:
@moneyneversleeps

Your point brings up an interesting question, if your premise is in fact correct, that the success of main st is dependent on the success of wall st (which I disagree with to a degree), doesn't that mean that the industry itself is too powerful, or in other words too big to fail. Isn't that part of the very root of the argument for financial reform. Why should one industry, in this case finance, have such a large sphere of influence that if it fails everyone fails as well.

In finance speak, you're implying that the American economy is a very unbalanced portfolio. Thus we need to reallocate our investments (industries) to mitigate our risk. We need to practice risk management and proper portfolio allocation, tenants of intelligent finance, to ensure the lasting success of the American economy. Whether you realize it or not, you're arguing for financial reform.

Certainly, finance is too powerful because main street depends upon it. Shall we also determine that the energy industry is too powerful because it provides the fuel for our power plants, cars, and planes? Shall we ban the utilities industry because it is too powerful (get it?) and we all depend upon it? Shall we break up the healthcare industry because we all need healthcare?

Finance and energy are perhaps the two industries most relevant to the entire economic system. There is no possible way to "reform" it such that this is not the case. You may shift some things around so that things change, but finance will unfortunately (I'm a banker) never be shifted to a point where it cannot cause systemic issues. It is at the root of all productive activity, and this will not change.

 

@ ke18sb

The guy is angry and just trying to make a point. He is saying people on Wall Street will always adapt and survive, which I agree. So what if some of the stuff he said is arrogant, logically unsound and completely off base. He is not trying to write his PHD research thesis.

 

Also he is mad at Main street always portraying themselves as the victim. Everyone in this society is more or less a self-interested entity. If you didn't understand what you were investing in, and lost money, because some wall street salesman talked you into it, are u really completely innocent. My guess is this is not the first you are fooled. Orange County? LTCM? Asian financial crisis? Dot-com bubble? Investors never learn their lessons from those events and they portray themselves as the victim every time. Fool you twice, shame on you...

I mean, for Christ's sake, some corporate bond, which had a 10% yield a year ago, has 1% yield now... And we are still in the crisis... Who knows what will happen when shit hit the fan in commercial real estate mortgage securities

 

Here's what your missing.

When the banks fall down - it isn't the influx of high talent workers that will destroy main street.

No.

It's the fact that businesses can't use investment banks to grow - there will be no jobs, because we, as bankers, will have stopped creating them. Blankfein said that we do 'God's work'. I think I'd go a little further. Since God doesn't exist, he doesn't do any work. That is not the way to describe your average banker.

Bankers are the gravity that keeps this world spinning. We make it so that businesses can keep going, we make it so they can grow and offer more jobs to the expanding population.

Kill the banks and there won't be any jobs for us to run to. The world will come crumbling down into the dark ages.

The ascent of industrialisation grew at the exact rate of the ascent of money. We finance growth - get rid of us - get rid of growth.

We break out backs working shifts that main street have never even dreamed, we protect you whilst you sleep, and for that we can hold our heads high.

You shouldn't feel immoral for making money, your shouldn't feel immoral because you are doing something most people cannot do. You should feel humbled and proud. And they should feel grateful that we help to keep bread on their table.

Kill us and you will cut off your own air supply.

 

The problem is when the finance types blow themselves up they blow up the whole economy with them. That needs to stop. And the Fed needs to stop enabling such behavior. I'm fine with them blowing themselves up all they want as long as it doesn't cause systemic risk and failure.

"We are lawyers! We sue people! Occasionally, we get aggressive and garnish wages, but WE DO NOT ABDUCT!" -Boston Legal-
 

Here is my perspective as a recent graduate that does not want to be a banker.

Just because you are a good banker does not mean that you would be a good engineer, a good teacher, a good small business owner, etc. I would bet money that being engineer (one that designs projects) is a little more difficult then being a banker. Engineers need to have an understanding of mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc that not all bankers could master. No offense, but finance is a blow off major, and I would bet that your entry level positions at banks are basically glorified but well compensated bitches.

Owning a small business is also very difficult. When you start, you have to be willing to work very hard (as hard as any banker), for almost nothing, and what your working at in usually manual and not fun. And If I had to be a high school teacher for the rest of my life, I would use the sepku knife, because contrary to popular opinion teachers work hard and are constantly shit upon by a bunch of immature dbags.

To those of you who think that you are going to be able to hop on to law. First take the LSAT its harder than the gmat. Then to make all that money that you are having wet dreams about realize that you must first get into a top 14 law school, and then you have to be in the top 15% of your class.

Lets not pretend that just because you are a banker, you can do anything else. If I was going to list the ten most difficult jobs-banker would not be one of them.

All this crap about banking being the foundation of the economy, and that we would go back to the dark ages without banking is retarded. You could have all the banking you wanted, but if you didnt have innovators like Tesla and Edison etc, a legal code that has evolved through the centuries, we would not be very far away from the dark ages. The economy needs banks to supply loans to individuals and businesses. That is all. The machine will go on without the tens of thousands of bankers-it wont run as smoothly, and it might suck for quite a while, but dont pretend what bankers do is essential.

Finally, for the record, everytime someone says that this reminds them of Rand and Gault they admit that they are retarded.

 
soitwouldseem:
Here is my perspective as a recent graduate that does not want to be a banker.

Just because you are a good banker does not mean that you would be a good engineer, a good teacher, a good small business owner, etc. I would bet money that being engineer (one that designs projects) is a little more difficult then being a banker. Engineers need to have an understanding of mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc that not all bankers could master. No offense, but finance is a blow off major, and I would bet that your entry level positions at banks are basically glorified but well compensated bitches.

Owning a small business is also very difficult. When you start, you have to be willing to work very hard (as hard as any banker), for almost nothing, and what your working at in usually manual and not fun. And If I had to be a high school teacher for the rest of my life, I would use the sepku knife, because contrary to popular opinion teachers work hard and are constantly shit upon by a bunch of immature dbags.

To those of you who think that you are going to be able to hop on to law. First take the LSAT its harder than the gmat. Then to make all that money that you are having wet dreams about realize that you must first get into a top 14 law school, and then you have to be in the top 15% of your class.

Lets not pretend that just because you are a banker, you can do anything else. If I was going to list the ten most difficult jobs-banker would not be one of them.

All this crap about banking being the foundation of the economy, and that we would go back to the dark ages without banking is retarded. You could have all the banking you wanted, but if you didnt have innovators like Tesla and Edison etc, a legal code that has evolved through the centuries, we would not be very far away from the dark ages. The economy needs banks to supply loans to individuals and businesses. That is all. The machine will go on without the tens of thousands of bankers-it wont run as smoothly, and it might suck for quite a while, but dont pretend what bankers do is essential.

Finally, for the record, everytime someone says that this reminds them of Rand and Gault they admit that they are retarded.

Some random thoughts:

"Owning a small business is difficult."

Two points: 1) If that business succeeds, you make for more money than banker. You may not get paid as much at the initial stages, but I guarantee that you will far surpass any banker if you and your idea are solid. 2) Then don't own a small business. If something is hard and doesn't pay well, logic would tell you not to follow that path. If you can afford and have the intelligence to open your own company, then you should have other options should you choose to exercise them. Just because something is hard, doesn't mean you should get paid a lot for it. Otherwise, construction workers and landscapers would dominate the world. Also, realize the concept of expected value.

Being an engineer may be harder than a banker. My best friend is an engineer, and he absolutely blows me away his mathematical knowledge. However, you could never put him in front of a client (I know, analyst's rarely are anyway). He knows numbers. He doesn't know people. In the end, CFOs don't want to talk to people that aren't polished. It's a sad truth. I'm far from polished, but I can game face it when needed.

Lawyers are geniuses and far too smart for banking...you're right. But how much value do those lawyers create? It's a legitimate question, as they may create some value with a tightly written PSA or ProSupp, but they do not originate anything. They are reactionary to banking transactions. Why would you pay someone who essentially supports bankers more than bankers? Shall we pay your assistant more than you? They chose that profession knowing exactly what it entailed.

The only two people I know that are going into teaching are the two biggest idiots I know. You don't realize just how incompetent your teachers were in school until you know the people that become teachers later in life.

Finance is a blow-off major relative to engineering. You're right. I have no argument. However, please also make fun of all the teachers with education degrees, journalists with communication degrees, and advertisers with advertising degrees. With the exception of a hard science or math, there aren't that many "rocket science" majors.

If you are going to call someone retarded for referring to "Gault," then please spell it correctly. Thank you.

 

@Car

Agreed that you can't breakup finance just like you wouldn't break up energy or health care. However, both of those industries are highly regulated. So its not an apples to apples comparison in the current state. The goal of financial reform would be to mitigate said systemic issues is all. While it will not guarantee there will be no future financial meltdowns it will ideally strengthen the system.

 

It must be said that, except for true geniuses, the most intelligent and ambitious men usually go into consulting or finance. It was certainly the case at my school and must hold true for other targets.

Look at the young talent on a trading floor: they all have the best credentials. In the UK, it's all Oxbridge or Ecole Polytechnique. It is absolutely ridiculous to contend that those guys could not be teachers. I'm not saying they would be great teachers. I'm saying they could get the qualification. Same applies to lawyers, doctors, you name it.

So many youngsters want to be bankers or consultants because those industries pay well and ensure that you will be someone who matters 20 years down the line. When being a teacher will offer the same perks, they will become teachers, trust me.

The question is thus, "why does finance pay so well / is such a good career?" Finance has an important role in the economy, as I said capital allocation and wealth transfer. The comparison with energy is to the point. At the same time, the markets suffer from asymmetry and financiers probably have an information rent. I doubt it is possible to seriously deal with that. As for excessive risk taking, it's easier to spot ex-post, isn't it? Raising capital requirements will limit the impact of crises but will not eliminate them.

Finance is a good career because it is a strong signal of one's intelligence and understanding of business. Even though legions of undergrads would work in banking for $20.000/y, they're the stupid ones the banks refuse to employ. I am the first one to admit that banking is not rocket science, but what is, seriously? Those who say that it's easy to be a banker are not mistaken - but to think that banking is "easier" one must never have worked. Consulting is easy too. Why the fuck do they hire top talent then? Because even though the day-to-day job is easy, intelligence still is an advantage, be it through enhanced learning capacities (and you learn a shitload) or during the occasional mind-boggling crunch. You really must be a retard to think that the average teacher would be as valuable to a bank as the people they tend to employ now.

Now the idea of the original letter was that ambitious types won't go away and, if banking becomes a dull career, they will pursue other opportunities - successfully.

soitwouldseem, feel free to post your ten most difficult jobs so I can laugh at you. Difficulty is irrelevant. You're paid according to your productivity.

 

@ke18sb - Main St and Wall St do go hand in hand. And politicians know that otherwise they would have clamped down when pure dogshit derivatives first made their rounds. The subprime mortgage crisis began with Main St having champagne taste off ginger ale pockets and using toxic credit to fund their need to impress people they don't even know with homes/cars/investments they cannot afford and didn't take the time to read the fine print. Wall Street may have been the one who packaged those loans and ultimately ended up getting their asses handed to them but the concept of lying about your income to get a house you cannot afford began on Main Street. Also, any financial advisor with a brain will tell you NOT to use more than 30% of your assets to play the markets since you can win big and lose big. Once again Main St got ahead of itself and didn't want the traditional 3-6% ROI from CDs and MM accounts, they wanted 40% gains every year and were willing to risk 50%+ of their net worth to get that. Wall Street and Main Street are equally greedy. The difference is for years Wall Street profited off Main Street's greed. The Government and general public will always go after those who profit the most off a bad situation when it takes demand to fuel supply. ie Drug dealers getting harscher sentences than drug users. Tobacco industry getting huge fines instead of smokers, Main St demanding toxic loans so they can "act as if" with giant mansions and 100% return portfolios and Wall St supplying that demand....until it exploded. That's my two cents on the situation. Main St and Wall St are equally guilty. So instead of wanting bankers' heads on a stick I hope Obama, with the help of people whose IQ isn't the same number as their shoe size, can come up with a solution that doesn't leave top-skilled bankers unemployed otherwise they will affect the job market.

 

^^^^^^^ Don't complain about people asking you about the crisis. The minute I tell people I'm a banker with a degree in Econ, they think I'm some Suze Orman and start asking me about Fico scores and credit cards lol. Once I explain to them that Economics nor Banking has anything to do with Suze Orman, they proceed to ask me about Bernie Madoff.

 
moneyneversleeps2:
^^^^^^^ Don't complain about people asking you about the crisis. The minute I tell people I'm a banker with a degree in Econ, they think I'm some Suze Orman and start asking me about Fico scores and credit cards lol. Once I explain to them that Economics nor Banking has anything to do with Suze Orman, they proceed to ask me about Bernie Madoff.

LOL~~~!!!!!

 

I can't believe someone has made the claim that corporate lawyers (a) are smarter than financiers and (b) do a more valuable job. Big law is an extension of the back office and is populated by soulless, one track minded dullards with great memories and work ethics and absolutely zero intellectual flair.

As for the letter itself it is quite clearly tongue in cheek and I can't see why anyone is getting their knickers in a twist over it. The fact is that the general public were more than happy to lap up debt fuelled growth and we are now suffering for it. Do bankers share culpability? Of course. Can a vibrant economy exist without a large and complex financial sector? Not on your life.

 
Djalminha:
I can't believe someone has made the claim that corporate lawyers (a) are smarter than financiers and (b) do a more valuable job. Big law is an extension of the back office and is populated by soulless, one track minded dullards with great memories and work ethics and absolutely zero intellectual flair.

As for the letter itself it is quite clearly tongue in cheek and I can't see why anyone is getting their knickers in a twist over it. The fact is that the general public were more than happy to lap up debt fuelled growth and we are now suffering for it. Do bankers share culpability? Of course. Can a vibrant economy exist without a large and complex financial sector? Not on your life.

Put some of that "intellectual flair" to use and spread some comps. Give me a break, both professions are reasonably "soulless" and filled with "dullards."

 

so when bankers get laid off they all go into landscaping and teaching jobs?

Do you think someone who was making 500k is going to apply for a job at McDonalds?

Who is going to pay an ex-banker to do a job that an illegal immigrant will happily do for minimum wage?

This thread really shows how easily influenced some people are.

 

theres truth in almost every posts argument. they ask us if the juice is worth the squeeze, well bankers can and often do get a whole lot more juice than most of the world, they certainly have to squeeze very hard. realistically, most bankers make 2-10(sometimes up to 1000)x what a teacher can, and probably work 3x the hours. so the statement was right, we can squeeze a lot harder than most professions, but get way more out of it.

just my thoughts

I know nothing. please share knowledge
 

As another poster pointed out, there's a lot of Ayn Rand in that email.

As somebody not in the financial world, I am shocked by how cocky you future masters of the universe are already. I admire your pluck, your utter faith in the darwinian game of capitalism. But I'm saddened by your level of delusion.

I think the most ignorant comment in the email letter was the statement that since the finance wizards were so smart they could very easily displace the teachers and push them out of their jobs further down the food chain. Sure you may "work" long hours, but I doubt you would put up with the nonlucrative principled work required of a teacher. Maybe teachers don't work from 5am to 10pm everyday, but they have a hell of a lot of responsibility and advanced wisdom on how to keep a diverse class of 30-35 students in line and learning. It takes much more than a 4.0 ivy league GPA to teach students year after year. In my 18 years of teaching I have yet to meet anybody who worked on wall street for an extended period who was now a dedicated public school teacher. Sure there are the occasional early retirees who flirt with public service who try it for a year or two, then throw in the towel. Why? Because it's very, very hard work and those of us who do it do it because we love it and because we believe in the value of education. Sure we'd love to make a half-million dollars a year and get bonuses 2-3X that, but we are happy to earn a middle-class wage in exchange for some job security and a pension. And many of my colleagues sent donations of $300 or more to Haiti.

For a teacher, our idea of life is to give back to the world everyday in hopes of making it a better place. And while I'm sure a lot of you young wallstreeters' dreams are to make a killing over 15-20 years of long hours in the meatwheel of IB/trading, then retire and begin your philanthropy career, be forewarned that time-shifting (delaying) spiritual fulfillment (as opposed to material fulfillment) has proven time and time again to be a losing strategy.

From what I see after a quick perusal of the comments, I think the best investment advice might be to begin your careers with a little less hubris.

 
brooklynleftie:
As another poster pointed out, there's a lot of Ayn Rand in that email.

As somebody not in the financial world, I am shocked by how cocky you future masters of the universe are already. I admire your pluck, your utter faith in the darwinian game of capitalism. But I'm saddened by your level of delusion.

I think the most ignorant comment in the email letter was the statement that since the finance wizards were so smart they could very easily displace the teachers and push them out of their jobs further down the food chain. Sure you may "work" long hours, but I doubt you would put up with the nonlucrative principled work required of a teacher. Maybe teachers don't work from 5am to 10pm everyday, but they have a hell of a lot of responsibility and advanced wisdom on how to keep a diverse class of 30-35 students in line and learning. It takes much more than a 4.0 ivy league GPA to teach students year after year. In my 18 years of teaching I have yet to meet anybody who worked on wall street for an extended period who was now a dedicated public school teacher. Sure there are the occasional early retirees who flirt with public service who try it for a year or two, then throw in the towel. Why? Because it's very, very hard work and those of us who do it do it because we love it and because we believe in the value of education. Sure we'd love to make a half-million dollars a year and get bonuses 2-3X that, but we are happy to earn a middle-class wage in exchange for some job security and a pension. And many of my colleagues sent donations of $300 or more to Haiti.

For a teacher, our idea of life is to give back to the world everyday in hopes of making it a better place. And while I'm sure a lot of you young wallstreeters' dreams are to make a killing over 15-20 years of long hours in the meatwheel of IB/trading, then retire and begin your philanthropy career, be forewarned that time-shifting (delaying) spiritual fulfillment (as opposed to material fulfillment) has proven time and time again to be a losing strategy.

From what I see after a quick perusal of the comments, I think the best investment advice might be to begin your careers with a little less hubris.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-education/2009/03/20/new-jersey-wants-to…

This is from last year, but yeah, a program exists to turn Wall Street types into teachers. I guess you just never came across any of them.

looking for that pick-me-up to power through an all-nighter?
 

Okay, nobody is saying that being a "Big fish" is something that should be judged (even though there are people with this opinion), but it is a fact that humankind is particularly greedy (if you compare us to certain animals, for example) and this is what created capitalism.

 
WSOHelper:
good discussion guys. Glad to see threads like this on WSO once in awhile and see the certified members contributing.
What a gay ass username.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
 

are people honestly assuming that in a world where bankers dont get paid that the money they would have earned vanishes off the face of the planet? What about the fact that 90% of what main street earns gets spent (goes back into the economy) and the top bankers (billionaire bunch) will spend a tiny amount of that. Even the analysts circulate the cash into a sub economy (the luxury goods market, run by a bunch of taxavoiding companies based in taxavoiding countries) - face it you spend a similar amount at the supermarket as the middle class, the difference is in the luxury markets.

For the next person to quote this and then goes DERP I CAN NAME COMPANIES THAT PAY TAX DERP, I can name a dozen that dont for every one you do name.

Personally I think wall street could take a 50% pay cut and nothing would change, want proof? look back 30 years. same game. same players, different paychecks.

 
trazer985:
are people honestly assuming that in a world where bankers dont get paid that the money they would have earned vanishes off the face of the planet? What about the fact that 90% of what main street earns gets spent (goes back into the economy) and the top bankers (billionaire bunch) will spend a tiny amount of that. Even the analysts circulate the cash into a sub economy (the luxury goods market, run by a bunch of taxavoiding companies based in taxavoiding countries) - face it you spend a similar amount at the supermarket as the middle class, the difference is in the luxury markets.

For the next person to quote this and then goes DERP I CAN NAME COMPANIES THAT PAY TAX DERP, I can name a dozen that dont for every one you do name.

Personally I think wall street could take a 50% pay cut and nothing would change, want proof? look back 30 years. same game. same players, different paychecks.

Over those 30 years there has been 152.42% inflation. So in essence, they were paid a bit more then than now.

Reality hits you hard, bro...
 
trazer985:
Personally I think wall street could take a 50% pay cut and nothing would change, want proof? look back 30 years. same game. same players, different paychecks.
Are you telling me you would work 100 hours a week staring at an Excel spreadhseet for $60,000 a year? I sure as shit wouldn't...

Oh, and yeah, like the poster above me said, you forgot to factor in inflation.

 

Sort of lame, at the end of the day you should care about your clients or you will ultimately end up as road kill. Sure there is always so yahoo who is interested in making a quick buck, but he dies quickly and in large numbers. Pick your team carefully, because at the end of the day it will be us against you, and we plan to be here for a long long time killing folks like you by the dozen.


We wait in the high grass . . . .

 

This is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. For anyone who has ever spent any time on the trading floor, it is no secret that it requires average intelligence at best (except for a select few seats). There is a 99% chance this person was still in college when they wrote this, or they were the 1% douchebag that all of his co-workers hated.

 

Great post! Spot on!

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.” Mayer Amschel Rothschild Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.-John D. Rockefeller
 

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Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

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Nihil architecto explicabo veniam distinctio. Et eaque et esse tenetur est dolores delectus. Voluptatem doloremque repellendus et reprehenderit.

Et in temporibus voluptatibus eius illum beatae est. Harum praesentium porro eaque mollitia et facilis. Est doloribus omnis dolores. Fuga fuga magni nihil rerum tempora ipsa consectetur. Voluptatem repudiandae consequatur consectetur. Sunt rerum beatae quo accusantium nihil. Omnis voluptas quia aut tempora eum non.

Et repellendus ipsa dignissimos ad fugiat. Sunt id dolorum quo ipsam distinctio voluptatem sed.

 

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Et doloremque officiis iste qui quae unde aperiam. Architecto fuga aperiam optio dolore. Voluptatem aut ut aspernatur deleniti ex aut impedit qui. Voluptatem dolorem enim placeat voluptatem recusandae velit a. Facilis et eligendi debitis sint.

Nobis sunt est sit iusto ut minus. Minus aut enim facilis enim qui. Minima ut mollitia ducimus repellat. Dolorem voluptas laboriosam quae quaerat.

 

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