Then it is “Meet the Rich and Oppressed,” courtesy of who else- the NY Times:
LAST year, investment bankers and their spouses kept their wallets shut during bonus season, first, out of panic, and later, fearing mobs with torches would descend upon their gated estates.
Now, after a year of self-imposed austerity and in what is shaping up as a spectacular bonus season, the Wall Street crowd is shaking off what one luxury retailer called its “frugal fatigue.” Unlike earlier spending sprees, however, the consumption will be a lot less conspicuous.
***More than in past years, this year’s bonus numbers are stirring deep resentment in a nation staggering under 10 percent unemployment.
***In the Hamptons, where real estate agents court bankers looking for summer homes, the sales are also expected to be a boon for contractors, movers and groundskeepers. “A community like the Hamptons depends on house trades,” said Diane Saatchi, an agent with Saunders and Associates who just sold a home to a banker for $4.9 million.
“Don’t ask to talk to him about it, because he won’t,” Ms. Saatchi said of the buyer, deflecting a reporter. “They don’t want anyone to know they are buying.” That includes the banker’s extended family, she explained, because he is worried they will ask him for money.
No one, she said, “is bragging about anything.”
I mean, really. What fun is it to own 5 million dollar house in the Hamptons if you can’t brag about it? Does it ever stop with the Times? Seriously. Every week we get one of these.
MaximusNYC
This is obviously a big part of their target demographic — the rich, or those who aspire to join their ranks.
Jim
@MaximusNYC:
Gotta have some numbers to show Tiffany’s so they’ll but quarter page ads for $50,000 earings.
asiangrrlMN
And we should pay money for this kind of ‘reporting’, because why again? Cry me a fucking river, wah wah wah. I heard similar shit on NPR about a year ago, and in a rage, I nearly drove my car off the road. Can’t have the second house in the Hamptons or have to skip out on the yearly-vacation to Europe this year? Keep it to your fucking self.
For this, I need the full range of rusty garden implements and not just my trusty rusty pitchfork.
Kryptik
@asiangrrlMN:
But if the rich are suffering this much, imagine how badly the little people are doing! We have to make sure the rich can by a THIRD summer home or it’s a sign that we’ll all be eating out of dumpsters!
…ok, wait, that was supposed to be parody, but I forgot that’s how way too many idiots actually think.
cmorenc
If the tough economy for the non-rich changes the nouveau-riche/financial sector ethos toward discretion and away from conspicuous consumption, that will be a very constructive development, even though the huge bonuses themselves are decidedly not. A greater value on discretion and less on flash would hugely benefit our general culture from top to bottom right now, and have collateral benefits over many areas (environment, land-use, energy, etc) beyond simply whether rich bankers need to be anxious about an angry mob bearing tar and pitchforks might be coming their way any night.
Again, I am NOT at all supporting here any notion that the huge bonuses are a worthy or good thing, not at all. But to the extent the bankers are able to extract and hold onto them, their feeling the need to tone down conspicuous spending/display of same is overall a good thing.
arguingwithsignposts
I don’t for the life of me understand these stories. It’s like they are trying to play both sides against the middle. On the one hand, they’re obviously writing these touchy-feely stories for the wealthy who read the paper (Their real estate section is basically all about those folks). On the other hand, there’s some consumption for the downtrodden in the story as well, stoking populist anger.
I think it would be interesting to actually do a story about the writers who have to do these stories. How do they feel about these assignments? Do they ever get jealous? Do they ever laugh inside while they hear these rich slobs whining about having to live on less than 8 figures? Do they ever feel shame about writing this apologetic crap?
scav
don’t cha love the little detail that these exemplars of the great and the good don’t even want to help their own “extended” families?
JGabriel
Laura Holson @ NYTimes:
“Look, Mom, just because I can buy a new house in the Hamptons doesn’t mean you can leech money off me for food. It’s a fucking recession. Suck it up, bitch.”
Welcome to the latest episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Randian.
.
Col. Klink
If you cut capital gains taxes I’m sure he could have afforded a six million dollar home. Those bastard Democrats.
You Don't Say
Anyone watching Fareed Zakaria? Noonan and Isaccson are really getting on my nerves.
Walker
@MaximusNYC:
This.
My wife lived in the NYC area for a time, and has the utmost contempt for the paper because of the type of people that always bragged to be its readers.
Kryptik
@Walker:
I used to be able to say I was proud to read it, because it meant I wasn’t a Post reader. But….good Christ. Thank god for the internet, since the ‘liberal papers of note’ have failed to be anything but ‘papers’. NYT might not be quite so bad as the WaPo these days, but they’re still bloody awful outside of Krugman, Blow, and a small handful of other columnists.
arguingwithsignposts
@asiangrrlMN:
I foresee a whole line of asiangrrlMN Rusty Gardens(tm) implements, available wherever fine populism is sold.
You Don't Say
@You Don’t Say: It’s Idolize Reagan hour on Zakaria.
asiangrrlMN
@Kryptik: Sadly, I thought you were channeling a winger when you wrote that and not doing satire. Sad, very sad.
@arguingwithsignposts: Oooh, that’s a good idea for a product line. Hm….
@You Don’t Say: Fuck Reagan with a rusty garden hoe. (Testing out a new product).
El Cid
Umm…
Fuck all you bastards to mother fucking hell. Assholes.
Task Force Ripper
@Walker:
People in NYC *bragged* about reading a newspaper there?
To whom?
Kryptik
@asiangrrlMN:
Why do you think I stopped where I did? Parody’s no good when it’s less absurd than reality.
Alex S.
sounds like the Gilded Age
asiangrrlMN
@Kryptik: I know! I tried to think of something too over-the-top for the wingers, and I couldn’t. Which scary as well as sad, come to think of it.
darryl
Fareed Zakaria is talking to Peggy Noonan? That’s disappointing. I haven’t seen his show lately, but when I saw it, in the beginning, he actually talked to smart people.
Gary K
Somebody play them a tune on this.
Kryptik
@asiangrrlMN:
We’re all Onion subscribers now.
dr. bloor
These stories have always been in the Times, good times and bad. They’re writing for their readers, or more precisely, the readers who patronize their advertisers. This isn’t exactly a mystery.
Once upon a time, it underwrote reporters who did a good job reporting on unpopular and unpleasant things, who even occasionally managed to speak truth to power. Now, not so much. That’s the problem.
asiangrrlMN
@Kryptik: No kidding. The fact that the Onion can still find ways to be humorous about current situations is a testament to their grit and determination.
darryl
In a perfect world, Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd would be the waiters wherever Krugman and Blow (and Kristof and Herbert) were eating, but we don’t live in a perfect world.
You Don't Say
@darryl: He had Robert Caro on the panel as well, which *almost* balanced it out but not quite.
The Tim Channel
Maybe bankers in the Hamptons will pay to see the New York Times online, because I don’t think too many people are going to point, pay and click to see articles involving the sufferings of super rich bankers and the shame they feel for spending their ill-gotten gains.
Enjoy.
Keith
This suppression of their ability – and desire – to brag, coupled with the press’ desire to interview them, is a chilling assault on their First Amendment rights.
SiubhanDuinne
“frugal fatigue”?
*”frugal fatigue”?*
*”FRUGAL FA-FUCKING-TIGUE”?*
I’m so sorry to have raised my voice to you. It was unforgivable of me. It won’t happen again, I assure you.
FlipYrWhig
@arguingwithsignposts:
I have always assumed that these were stories about the friends of the writers. A colleague was once quoted in the Times about American Idol. Did they go through a process of exhaustive research to find a typical American Idol fan? No, the person writing the article knew her and knew she watched it.
darryl
90% of the country is not rich. I would write David Gregory and suggest to him that he take a whole two weeks and not invite anyone on his show who is rich, but the idea would probably be incomprehensible to him.
Jim
@darryl:
I’m guessing this is the same sort of network pressure that made Rachel have Uncle Pat on her show fairly regularly in those first few months. I actually take a perverse pleasure in watching the Magic Dolphin Lady on TeeVee. All that mugging and hammy emoting, like the slightly drunk suburban matron who bribed her way into the lead role of the community theatre production. If only some soap had offered La Nooners a recurring role in front of the camera in the nineties, what treacly horrors might we have been spared on Sunday mornings.
SiubhanDuinne
FYWP comment: What happened to that nice shortcut for bolding by putting asterisks around whatebver you want to bold? I had just gotten used to it and now it’s gone :-(
Jean
If you’d all just vote Republican and often, you too can someday have a house or two in the Hamptons. That’s what sold to the middle class. Truman, I believe, said, “If you want to live like a republican, vote like a democrat.
Shell
That’s actually part of her job description.
Cat Lady
@asiangrrlMN:
A rusty garden weasel would be a nice addition to your line, to use in conjunction with all of your other fine rusty garden implements – in particular on one weasel named Lloyd Blankfein.
ruemara
Kinda OT, but you know why Democratic Congress people have no spine? Because their constituents have no spine. I know over 50 people of supposed progressive, left or plain old democratic party leanings. Out of that group, after days of goading, cajoling, reminding, etc., about 4 may-MAY-have called their representatives to state a preference on the HCR legislation. Must were silent or told me it was going to fail because of Congress so why bother? Even my own supposedly more active than thou mate has still not called. It’s insane how much Dems would rather sit down & bitch than do anything.
Know why the NYT sticks with the downtrodden rich? Because they at least whine until they get their way. The rest of the country thinks that everyone is just supposed to “get it” and make “it” right, with no input from them.
Loneoak
OT, I liked Plouffe’s WaPo Op-Ed today. There’s no hippy punching in there, it’s all true, and very pragmatic. I’m relieved that Obama has brought him back in a big way.
Jean
@Loneoak: I agree. I’m going to hear him speak at the Richmond Forum in two weeks. Sense to Power.
Morbo
Dear NYT:
Please put this behind a paywall and don’t bring it back. By the way, you guys do realize that Colbert Platinum is a parody of these articles, right?
Nick
@ruemara: Win
darryl
Something has to explain it. I refuse to believe that Rachel Maddow is personally dumb enough to think Pat had anything to contribute.
Shell
Does the article go into further details of this so-called ‘austerity?’ Forced to drink domestic champagne? Could only rent that villa in Capri for two months instead of three? Had to tell your pouting teen that her Sweet sixteen bash could not be filmed by MTV for fear of those mobs descending on your gates?
arguingwithsignposts
@darryl: Excellent idea. I’d love it if MTP just talked to someone outside the village every once in a while.
OTOH, it would be awesome to hear one day “our first guest today is Muhammed Al-Ajani, a taxi driver from Alabama to talk about what it’s like to be among the working poor.”
I mean, I like Barbara Ehrenreich and respect her efforts, but she can break the illusion and go back to her upper middle-class existence.
@Loneoak: I’m guessing now that Plouffe’s done with the book tour, he’s available for bookings. I hope this works out. But without some legislative victories …
Jim
@Loneoak:
I can’t imagine he didn’t run that by Obama first, and I like what he has to say. I’d like to see some follow up, and quick.
Ash Can
Since the Times keeps running stories like these, I’m starting to think it’s a stealth hit job. Sure, the Times has affluent readers, but it also has plenty of non-affluent readers, as well as intellectual and influential readers on various community (and wider) levels. Once, maybe twice tops? Reporting on a (supposedly) newsworthy curiosity. Continually? Seems like the Times is looking to keep this topic on people’s radar screens. Now, if it were the Wall Street Journal running these articles, that would be an instance of “cry for these poor souls; they’re suffering,” because that’s so obviously the WSJ’s agenda. I’m suspecting an entirely different agenda on the part of the NYT.
asiangrrlMN
@Cat Lady: I actually do have a rusty garden weasel in my product line (thanks to A Mom Anon), but for Mr. Blankfein, I will make it double-platinum.
GregB
Why is Noonan talking to Zakaria? I mean he doesn’t even look American.
-G
Ash Can, you mean the same Times that gave Judith Miller the front pages for Dick Cheney’s war alley-oops on Meet the Press? They are secretly pulling for the average Joe?
darryl
@arguingwithsignposts:
I only have about one or two good ideas per year, but urging MtP, This Week, etc, to talk to non-rich people is one of them, I think. It doesn’t even occur to them that they’re only talking to a subset of rich people.
Ash Can
@GregB: It doesn’t boil down to “pulling for” anyone, really, it boils down to getting as many readers as possible. If the NYT felt as though its readership was majority IGMFU-wealthy, this would be a sympathy play. I don’t think the NYT muckety-mucks think that’s how their readership numbers break down. I’m thinking the NYT’s primary purpose in running these articles is to throw red meat to the majority of its readers. But I think a secondary reason, in light of the more recent op-eds written by its own editorial staff (as opposed to the big-name twits), could possibly be that this really does reflect the consensus opinion of its staff today (as opposed to those heady and confused days of 2003).
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: Yes, this would make a good story. Unfortunately, it would have to be done with anonymous sourcing and by someone who had no interest of ever writing features for the NY Times and similar publications.
Loneoak
@Jim:
FWIW, Obama posted the OpEd on Facebook. LOL.
What I like about Plouffe is that he understands doing the right thing will result in political victories. He doesn’t traffic in double-backflip triple-twist insider legislative gaming. The formula is so simple it has to be right: pass legislation that makes people’s lives measurably better, consistently remind people that you have made their lives better, and then organize and ask them to re-elect you to make their lives even better.
How is that so fucking hard that Democrats fail on it nearly every time?
Max
@Loneoak: I saw that too. I like the comment from “Obama” that preceeded it.
Jim
@Loneoak:
Cool. Can we take that as an Executive Order against bedwetting?
I love that Plouffe used that phrase chez Broder. I think he’s my kinda guy.
Loneoak
@Max:
I wonder if he actually makes those posts. It’s unlikely of course, but the image of him sitting down at his Oval Office desk on a Sunday morning and posting to Facebook is delightful.
CT Voter
@Shell: You betcha! Bentley vs Rolls dilemma. . .and the anger these poor rich people feel:
Max
@Loneoak: It’s a better image than the one I have of Clinton sitting at his desk, with an intern under it.
:)
(sorry Clinton lovers.)
ono
I’m going to start baking cakes for the peasants. The banksters won’t do it, but someone has to.
asiangrrlMN
@Loneoak: I finally read this. Excellent sentiments, and I am glad Plouffe is back on-board. If the Dems can follow his plan, we MAY be able to steady this ship. Maybe.
@CT Voter: Fuck the nameless banker’s wife with a rusty weed whacker. You know why it’s easy to blame the rich people like her hubby? Because they are greedy muthafuckers who made their money off the back of the poor and then whined about having to take a decrease in bonus.
dr. bloor
@asiangrrlMN:
Is the impressive collection of rusty garden tools and home improvement devices you’ve put together to be found on some special aisle at Home Depot?
FlipYrWhig
@CT Voter:
Man, I really don’t like the way “the community” gets used lately. I think there should be a distinction between “community” and “group of people.” “Community” has resonances of mutual respect, mutual obligation, and a kind of standing up to be recognized by the mainstream: black community, latino community, LGBT community, etc. The “investment banker community” is just a big bag of dicks. They don’t deserve to wear the label of “community.”
(And, frankly, no, no they don’t “work hard.” Working under stress is not the same thing as working hard.)
Church Lady
If it was banks still owing the Treasury money, I could understand the outrage and anger. It isn’t. Any bank paying out bonuses (which would more appropriately be labled “commissions” in many cases) either never took TARP money, or has paid it back, with interest, at a profit to the Treasury.
I look at it this way – whether or not the bankers receive bonuses doesn’t affect my life in any tangible way. It just doesn’t make a difference to me, and I’m trying to figure out how it affects anyone other than the people that actually get the money. Actually, it does affect all of us in one particular way – the bankers tend to make most of their campaign contributions to Dems. Obama received more money from Wall Street than any candidate for President ever had. Take heart and look at the bright side – their contribution dollars will probably continue to go to the candidates of your choice!
Where was the outrage when Fannie and Freddie paid out their bonuses earlier this year? Some of thoses execs were in line to get millions. Unlike the banks, they aren’t turning a profit. Last time I looked, they are both continuing to hemmorage money and there is no end it sight to the money they will lose. My friends, that is YOUR money that is being lost and YOUR money that paid those bonuses. How about pulling out your pitchforks and torches for them?
ruemara
Heh. When I worked for medium big business, I was told not to be greedy when I thought my raise and promotion was kinda crappy at 2%. When my bonus at the end of our most profitable year ever was $200-and so was the bonus’ for my freelance team, I was told not to be greedy when I voiced disbelief. When I found out that my company had artificially kept my pay and benefits low by lying to me about what my title was and telling HR something else, I was told not to be greedy, since I was at least working in my field (design).
These fuckers bring the world’s economy to it’s knees, after ruining company after company by demanding outsourcing, slashing pay and benefits in takeovers etc etc etc. They are now upset they can’t spend their ill gotten gains in peace. Meanwhile, after a decade, I’m not even earning half what I did in 1999.
I’d take the money back, burn the house and piss on the ashes, thank you. Big business types have no shame.
arguingwithsignposts
@FlipYrWhig:
A-f**kin’-men. Worse than the whining about having their net worth drop a digit is the argument that these people work “hard” for all that money. A garbageman works hard. A nurse works hard. A short-order cook works hard. A firefighter or police officer often works hard. A public school teacher works harder than people think.
Bankers? Meh. Cut off the air conditioning in their offices. Make their trading floor the bottom of a coal mine and then come back and talk about working “hard.”
(I say this as someone who doesn’t consider his work “hard,” but whose parents and grandparents did work hard.
@Church Lady:
Link or it didn’t happen.
arguingwithsignposts
@ruemara:
this. Very much this.
Church Lady
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/frank-cant-stop-fanniefreddie-bonuses
Church Lady
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031803188.html
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article6030308.ece
Just a couple more for your edification.
Church Lady
I hope that you now believe that it happened. Now, please show a level of outrage equal to that of the greedy bankers.
arguingwithsignposts
@Church Lady:
Since I won’t trust anything written under the aegis of L. Brent Bozell, here’s an AP link.
Consider this my outrage. Two executives got $6 million. A drop in the bucket compared to GS, BoA or the other big Wall Street bankers, but still too much. yeah.
Also, Fannie and Freddie are backstopping a helluva lot of mortgages. I’m curious how much of their losses stem from Wall Street using them to sop up WS’s messes? I don’t know. This is a legitimate question.
CT Voter
@FlipYrWhig: The “investment banker community” is just a big bag of dicks. They don’t deserve to wear the label of “community
Hey, even dicks can belong to a community. They have mutual respect for each other, and they look out for each other, and if they can raise the circumstances of each and every member by screwing all the little people and little companies in a mindless orgasm of greed, they’ll do it! That’s community! What do you have against dicks, anyway????? Dicks are people too, you know.
Comrade Darkness
Some people call you the elite. I call you my readership?
arguingwithsignposts
@Church Lady:
I would argue that it affects your life in a very tangible way. The fast and loose rules by which these bank executives traded stocks and shuffled around other people’s money directly led to the financial shock of late 2008. Even the bankers begrudgingly admitted this when they appeared before congress recently.
They trade for short term profits to pump up their bonuses, ignoring long-term structural risks. Do you know anyone whose 401K plummeted by 50 percent? Anyone who’s lost a job? Who can’t get a home loan or modification? A small business owner who can’t get short-term credit?
There’s your tangible way.
Comrade Darkness
@Church Lady: Yes, Fannie and Freddie should never have been privatized. Ever. Their management should have been salaried employees of the government with no bonuses. Do their jobs, collect their paychecks, that’s it. Absurd executive compensation is at least half the cause of the bubble that led to the crash. Everyone (from the banks to the mortgage brokers and agents) cashing out through fraud as fast as they could believing they’d already be rich and out the door before the bills came due. The cash out potential at the executive level is so fucking high that one year’s looting is good for life. (Unless you are an idiot, which most of them turn out to be, judging by their congressional testimony)
The current situation where the mortgage financial system would be utterly frozen without these entities in the marketplace, only justifies their existence. But again, operating at the will of the government to close the gap after capitalism consumes itself in a raging ball of greedy rage. Which it ONLY does absent strict regulation (chart of bank failures per year. before during and after regulation.
So yes, no bonuses. Ever. Thanks for supporting the progressive, government-owned position on this issue.
Church Lady
@arguingwithsignposts:
Can I raise my hand on the 401K question (although ours was actually a Simple IRA plan and we only lost 40%)? I’ll also raise my hand to not being able to get short term credit (unless we want to guarantee single thing we own in exchange for a new line of credit). But do I blame banker’s bonuses? No, not really.
I’m more willing to blame the de-regulation (signed into law by Clinton, I believe) that allowed the banks to take extraordinary risks and AIG to insure those risks with no money to back it up.
I’m more willing to blame the Fed, which artificially held interest rates down for waaaaayyyy too long.
I’m more willing to blame Fannie and Freddie for being willing to water down their underwriting guidelines, which in turn (along with those artificially low interest rates from the Fed) allowed the ballooning of the real estate bubble. I’m more willing to blame those in the government that should have seen the shit storm coming and then done something to try to mitigate the damage BEFORE it happened. After all, if Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini could see it coming so very clearly, why was everyone in the federal government, on both sides of the aise, seemingly asleep at the wheel?
There is a shitload of blame to go around. Blaming it all (or even mostly) on bankers’ bonuses is just disingenuous.
Church Lady
Oh, any by the way, lest you think I’m some sort bank apologist, I fully support trading transaction fees (might slow down some of the institutional churning that drives much of the market’s gains and losses) and even many of the proposed bank reforms and taxes that the Administration is talking about. If it will help protect the world financial markets from another near meltdown, I am all for it.
arguingwithsignposts
@Church Lady:
Oh, wait, are you going to go after the community reinvestment act? Because that seems to be the RW talking point you’re barreling toward pretty quickly.
I’m sorry, but just because there was deregulation (which I do think contributed, and shouldn’t have happened, but was a bipartisan effort – Phil Gramm, anyone?) doesn’t mean the people who exploited that deregulation get off scott-free.
It’s like if the gov’t suddenly said, “we aren’t going to regulate murder as much as we have in the past.” Suddenly, murder explodes. Do I blame the gov’t. Sure. But the gov’t didn’t force those murderers to pull the trigger. Same with the bankers. Just because you *can*, doesn’t mean you *should*. The government didn’t force anyone to write NINA loans (no income no assets). The gov’t didn’t *force* banks to ramp up their leverage to 30-1.
So yeah, I don’t buy your argument. AIG, Fannie and Freddie all had their hand in it, but the bankers gladly took advantage of the laissez fair atmosphere to screw everyone royally. And the bonuses were a big reason why they thought it was a good bet. And a good bet it was, for them.
West of the Cascades
Are the only people who still subscribe to the NYT those who buy $4.9 million houses? When is the Times going to die its well-deserved death?? (not soon enough …)
Church Lady
No, no one forced anyone to write NINA loans, but why did Fannie and Freddie take them? Who thought it was a great idea to downgrade their underwriting guidelines? Could it possibly have been the Fannie and Freddie execs that were taking obscene bonuses from a quasi-governmental entity? People like Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines, hmmm? Believe me, I dealt with Fannie and Freddie underwriting guidelines for years in the process of issuing mortgage backed securities, and if those rules had been kept in place, the real estate bubble could not have occurred – most of the loans would have never, ever been made. After all, the banks made them because someone (read: Fannie and Freddie) was going to take that shit off their hands.
Your arguement fails on the merits.
arguingwithsignposts
@Church Lady:
Your argument fails on the spelling, but again, nobody held a gun to the banksters’ heads and forced them to disregard their due diligence. They also didn’t force them to manufacture MBS’s and get them rated AAA when most of them were full of sh*t. And they damned sure didn’t force the banks to resort to CDS’s – betting on the failure of the very securities they packaged and sold to pension funds, investors, etc.
Like I said, there’s plenty of blood on plenty of hands. Again, maybe you should watch this and get back to us. The banksters were paid *billions* to exploit the system. They were enabled by your laissez faire Grover Norquist-loving politicians, sure. But it’s not all fannie and freddie at fault.
Church Lady
No, it’s not all Fannie and Freddie’s faults – as you may recall from my posting at #75. As you and I agree on, there is plenty of blame to go around. What you and I disagree on, however, the the amount of blame that should be apportioned to Fannie and Freddie vs. the greedy, eeee-vil bankers.
Look at it in these terms: Fannie and Freddie don’t water down their underwriting guidelines. What happens then? The answer: no shitty loans! Why not shitty loans? Becausethe gangster banksters have no where to unload the shit. If there isn’t the ability to unload the shit onto someone else’s balance sheet, there is no advantage is allowing the shit mortgage to be be originated in the first place. After all, who wants to keep the shit on their balance sheet?
And no, I don’t blame the Community Reinvestment Act – something that started out with good intentions. I portion a huge amount of the blame on Freddie and Fannie for taking something good and twisting it into a giant, fetid, smoldering dung heap, which in turn started a huge domino effect.
scav
yeah yeah yeah. so why are bankers are paid so much for such “innovation” when everything they do is dictated by the big bad Fannie and Freddie? POOR little bankers. lured into dark limos by the promise of lollies.
Chad N Freude
1. Bankers work hard. It’s laborers who don’t work hard, they just stand around on street corners all day.
2. I consider a community to comprise individuals with shared interests and aspirations, so yes, bankers and bags of dicks do make up a community.
3. @Church Lady: The bonuses certainly have a direct affect on those who support The Community, such as real estate agents in the Hamptons, sellers of Aston-Martins painted discreet, non-flamboyant colors, etc. But such people are not the only ones affected. You and I and other members of the non-plutocracy are being told in a tangible way that We are different from Them, much like the sans-culottes were different from the Facebook followers of Marie Antoinette. The bonuses are tangible evidence of a growing class division between the have-a-lots and the have-somes and a driving (symbolic) force for the Tea Partiers, which I worry may have a serious tangible effect on me.
Deschanel
Can I just point out that this nauseating article was in the “Styles” section, the separate Sunday insert that is completely in the hands of its own editorial team of twitty socialite- want to bes, fake Carrie Bradshaws, shopping ninjas, wedding announcements? Yes, it’s still the Times, and a lot of these Sunday Styles articles seemed designed to annoy. But it was not on page A1, and “Styles” is held in eye-rolling contempt by a lot of the NYT staff I’ve met. It’s the fluff section.
But this is the 4th link to this article I’ve seen today, so they must know that outrage gets eyeballs. Hm.
Wile E. Quixote
@Church Lady
I don’t think you’re a bank apologist, I think you’re a pathetic little tool who feels a sick and disgusting need to apologize for the actions of those in power. You’re a slave and you love being a slave.
darryl
I teach 9th grade Intensive Math. My classes are full of the kids who, due to discipline problems and learning disabilities, can’t pass the statewide test to graduate. I make about $32,000 a year. A week when I don’t come close to a physical confrontation with a kid bigger and stronger than me is an unusually good week.
(Edited to Add for Law Enforcement: I would never get violent with a kid, I am referring to situations where I’m a hair from pressing the All-Call security button. Of course I would never hit a kid.)
The pitchforks and bonfires look better with each passing month….
Chad N Freude
@Wile E. Quixote: Well, that’s one way to avoid substantive discussion.
Jebediah
@darryl:
Sometimes the banksters and/or their apologists will bring up the hours they work. “Woe is us, we don’t work 9 to 5, we work many many hours and on weekends too” etc.
What darryl didn’t mention about teaching is that most teachers take a lot of work home, and are working many hours beyond the time they are actually on campus. He also didn’t mention the lack of materials in many (most?) school districts. I spent a little time teaching in public school, and so I feel comfortable saying that any rich bankster who thinks he or she is working as hard as darryl is, with as much stress, needs a vigorous slapping.
kay
I think what’s happened is that people were told these huge financial entities were essential to “Main Street” survival, for years and years. We had this finance system, humming along, and sure they got paid a ton and sure they were really enamored of huge, ostentatious displays of wealth, but we needed them. For something.
But then they crashed their own sector, and were rescued, and became profitable again, and nothing improved for most people.
They’re back and there’s been little or no effect on anything in the ordinary economy.
You can’t help but think they aren’t really all that crucial, other than as a malevolent thing that might turn on you, but they aren’t of much practical utility. Not a net positive, to put it mildly.
So you wonder why you went to all that trouble to rescue them.
Church Lady
@Chad N Freude: Wile always avoids substantive discussion. He just likes to fling poo.
Church Lady
@darryl: Yes, teachers are not paid enough. It’s the biggest reason I discouraged my daughter from majoring in education. However, not all states pay as crappy as you insinuate your state/district does. My sister-in-law earns over 50K teaching AP World History in Texas. She has a Masters in Education and 8 years teaching experience. If you are at or above this experience level, have you considered relocating to another state?
bob h
The Fed supplies money to the banks at near 0%, and the bankers then invest the money in 4-5% Treasury bills – free profits intended to bolster balance sheets. The bankers then help themselves to most of this gift from the taxpayers and it sustains the Hamptons.
I would guess, however, that many of these people are in very serious trouble. They borrow massive amounts and leverage themselves to keep up in the invidious comparison competition, and things have gone cruelly into reverse.