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We are Wall Street ... we are smarter

Joined
5/2/06
Messages
11,743
Points
273
An email that has been going viral on Wall Street.
“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?”
FT Alphaville
 
this email is bullshit, I definitely get up and go pee when I want to.

trickle down economics, really?!?
 
this email is bullshit, I definitely get up and go pee when I want to.

trickle down economics, really?!?

Agreed. Complete garbage. And everyone is smarter than a dinosaur. Come to think of it, the vegetarian dinosaurs weren't vicious either. People were complaining when the market was supposedly roaring to 14,000 -- but their voices weren't heard above the din of mass-media cheerleaders. And the skill set required to teach in American schools -- especially when faced with an obdurate wall of dense stupidity -- is very different to the skill set required in an environment where everyone is in the top 1% of ability. Writing style? What moron penned this?
 
@ the comments: more bleating from the sheeple. Congress isn't going to do sh!t, because even if they do, Wall Street can pay lawyers, sexretaries, quants, and whatever else have you far more money than anyone else, to figure out loopholes and create new ways of repackaging old things just to play regulatory arbitrage.

As for Lloyd Blankfein going on TV and saying that GS needs to look good in the eyes of the public...

I feel that Mr. Blankfein would be best served by taking some advice from George Carlin:

"Think about how stupid the average American is. And then realize that half of them are dumber than that!"

Most Americans are sheep, not even breaking six figures a year, and drinking the kool-aid that the mainstream media feeds them.
 
>> Most Americans are sheep, not even breaking six figures a year, and drinking the kool-aid that the mainstream media feeds them.

...sheep not even breaking six figures a year? well this does sound arrogant to say the least...

I wonder how many figures a year you would be breaking if not for your parents migrating from Russia during the "jewish migration" of 1970's, who by the way I am almost sure were not making six figures for quite some years, and paying your college fees so you can go to wall street afterwards...
 
I feel that Mr. Blankfein would be best served by taking some advice from George Carlin:
"Think about how stupid the average American is. And then realize that half of them are dumber than that!".
Most Americans are sheep...

Wow thats obnoxious!

Anyways, I fear a population of stupid men a lot more than intelligent folks, since they can be swayed by the media, politicians easily to yield unhappy consequences for you, the intelligentsia. Just the fact that you continue to thrive is proof enough that Americans are not stupid.
 
Most Americans are sheep, not even breaking six figures a year, and drinking the kool-aid that the mainstream media feeds them.

Heck, some of them don't even have their own jets.

Wisdom and maturity start with realising that one is oneself a member of the masses; that collective destiny affects one individually as well and sweeps one along with it; that one is not isolated from or above the mass of humanity. To think otherwise is Ayn Randism.
 
Most Americans are sheep, not even breaking six figures a year, and drinking the kool-aid that the mainstream media feeds them.

Come on, no need to insult and belittle others for drinking another kool-aid than yours...
 
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.

Big talk. I dare the author to come to my office and try to take my job.
 
What a Trollish little letter.

It's true that there's a great deal of self-serving rationalization that goes on in the financial industry to justify outsized compensation. At the same time, I find the superior attitude that seems to have taken hold toward the industry--and in particular its ordinary white-collar workers--more than a little annoying.

The fact is that white-collar workers in America generally get paid for producing things with essentially no economic or social value. I find it hard to take that a middle manager in an advertising company somehow thinks they're doing something that's more "real" than working with financial derivatives.
 
What a Trollish little letter.

It's true that there's a great deal of self-serving rationalization that goes on in the financial industry to justify outsized compensation. At the same time, I find the superior attitude that seems to have taken hold toward the industry--and in particular its ordinary white-collar workers--more than a little annoying.

The fact is that white-collar workers in America generally get paid for producing things with essentially no economic or social value. I find it hard to take that a middle manager in an advertising company somehow thinks they're doing something that's more "real" than working with financial derivatives.

More envy and sour grapes, I would have thought. Mingled perhaps with some schadenfreude.
 
As the letter points out, everyone complains when something doesn't go there way.

However, the letter itself is an embodiment of that as well.
 
Most Americans are sheep, not even breaking six figures a year, and drinking the kool-aid that the mainstream media feeds them.

I'm sorry but if that is true, you are probably in whatever groups stand below "sheep" since, from your own account, you haven't been able to get a job yet.

IMHO, you are drinking a different kool-aid.
 
Whoever wrote this mail must be so insecure about his qualifications outside the world of finance.
 
The painful irony is certainly that if the writer of the letter represents those that are 'smarter', he would be 'smart' enough to know you don't need to prove it to anyone.

If you're 'smart' enough, you find a way, no matter the conditions, the regulations, or what a single person thinks about it. If you believe in what you do, that should be good enough. If it isn't, then you have a litany of other problems, some that may or may not cause you to write silly chain emails on behalf on an industry.
 
The painful irony is certainly that if the writer of the letter represents those that are 'smarter', he would be 'smart' enough to know you don't need to prove it to anyone.

I would've agreed with this however, the truth is a little more complicated. The fact of the matter is they want to prove they are better all the time, at anything. It's the competitive instinct. That means you need to be a little insecure sometimes so you can be "in the hunt" all the time.

I don't agree with his/her views but I can see where they are coming from. However, I highly doubt he/she will cut the lawn. they probably don't remember how much work that entails.
 
I would've agreed with this however, the truth is a little more complicated. The fact of the matter is they want to prove they are better all the time, at anything. It's the competitive instinct. That means you need to be a little insecure sometimes so you can be "in the hunt" all the time.

I don't agree with his/her views but I can see where they are coming from. However, I highly doubt he/she will cut the lawn. they probably don't remember how much work that entails.
I see what your saying, however if anything I think I'd be more insecure towards contemporaries in the industry, not blue-collar type workers. Everyone has their place in the machine. Whatever helps him sleep at night, I guess, it's just pointless to try to justify yourself to a set of people who would never understand, or want to. Ignorance is bliss, on both sides, as you mention.
 
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