Traders talk back to Occupy Chicago

Someone in the Chicago Board of Trade dropped this printed rant on top of “Occupy Chicago” protesters this Wednesday, as demonstrators and union workers gathered in the city's financial center:

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.

More: The Daily Caller, Raw Story. (via Susannah Breslin).

• [Charles Vestal]

  Chris, what an asshole.

  • [Michael Hasse]

    Chris, what an *ignorant* asshole.

    (Fixed that).

  • [Janiece Senn]

    These guys are so out of touch. They make a living lying, cheating and stealing and they think people will trust them to go in their homes and paint walls.  Most people were happy for a couple years after being forced by their employers to accept the 401k in place of a pension. Wall street di pump those dollars up for a couple years just to get every one comfortable and convince other companies to do the same. Then when the pot got big they stole it all.  Yea, we should be ashamed of that, right? We didn’t see it coming but they knew exactly what the plan was. Assholes!

• [James Harrison]

  From that letter, it would be wise to invest in whoever makes garden hoses…

  Joking aside…

  The people did not just gamble and lose. That would be fair. Instead, Wall Street knowingly gave the house a rigged deck that only dealt them 21 and we had no chance to win in the first place.

• [The Life Of Bryan]

  I strongly question their choice of verbs in the second sentence.

• [Kilteddad]

  Wow, you can get a job on the Chicago Board of Trade without a basic understanding of Economics…

• [Mari Lwyd]

  Those sure are strong words for an overpaid trading mechanism..

  [edit] that lacks the ability to form original thoughts http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2010/04/30/a-disgusting-little-email-making-the-rounds-on-wall-street/
  (I knew this screed sounded familiar)

• [toasterslie]

  Looks like somebody was born on third base and thinks they hit a triple.

  • [Cowicide]

    Looks like somebody was born on third base and thinks they hit a triple.

    And this was after hitting an inept foul ball, but the umpire is their daddy and let it slide…

• [Stefan Jones]

  He could get a job as a douche, that’s for sure.

  Do elephants need douches? Because this guy would be perfect for that.

  I wouldn’t wait until he’s knocked off the pyramid to see if he’d fit. Assuming we could find a find a willing elephant.

• [slobit75]

  #ows is not really about tearing down capitalism, is it? 

  • [ComradeQuestions]

    #ows is not really about tearing down capitalism, is it?

    In the same way that the Revolutionary War was about overtaxing tea, yes.

    • [Ian Brewer]

      Actually, the Revolutionary War was about taxation without representation.

      • [Carl Berglund]

        Is that right?  If the colonies had been granted proportional representation, how many seats would they have had in parliament?  I’ve been under the impression for some time that the number would’ve been far too small to sway policy.

        • [Mister44]

          Well – he is right, that is mainly what it was over. The Colonists bent over backwards trying to come to a workable arrangement with England. Remember most people WERE British and considered themselves subjects of the crown. England was broke from the 7 Years War and looked at the thriving Colonies as a great place to pay off its debts. IIRC 1/3rd of the Colonists still didn’t want to become independent from England.

        • [Carl Berglund]

          These are solid points, Mister44; however — and I may be interpreting the motivations of the “founding fathers” in a more cynical light than is justified — it seems unlikely to me that noble sentiment was at the base of the revolution.  “No taxation without representation” strikes me as more of a sound bite than cause.

          Had the colonies been represented in parliament it seems that they would have had little clout, although I suppose it’s possible that the revolutionaries believed that, given the proper forum for oration, they could have a disproportionate effect.

        • [Mister44]

          I am not even sure if seats in Parliament were needed. They wanted to be included in the process of being governed from afar. Each colony had it’s own form of gov, and were independent and democratic to a degree. The problem was England taxed the shit out of things they used everyday with out any say in the matter.

          ETA – Ben Franklin was an ambassador to England and worked for years trying to get them to be more reasonable and even got them to revoke the Stamp Tax for a time. After they added it and a bunch of others he finally said, “Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home.” (That is a direct quote.)

          But yeah, “No taxation without representation.” is a sound bite. People love to distill grand events into a few sentences. Still, with today’s kids/education, we are lucky if they even have this simple grasp of history.

  • [Josiah Wetzel]

    Its about the absurd power generating mutually ramifying collusion between our government’s two fave political parties and the corporations that nourish them. So saying that its about undercutting capitalism just neglects the sycophantic political system that buttresses (and lives off of!) the whole mire.

  • [paul beard]

    If the only capitalism you understand is what we have been seeing for the past 10 years, yes. But the kind that allowed the US to offer a decent chance to just about anyone from 1950 to 2000, no. I think we can tell which one is preferred by the litterers who shared that. 

  • [Smittie Smith]

    Yeah, it is.

  • [Stephen Smith]

    nope.

  • [Drew_Gehringer]

    No, it’s about the fact that money gets you more political power in America then voting does, which isn’t what’s supposed to happen.

    • [dataninja]

      So we should make political donations by unions illegal?

      Yeah, gotta hate that double edged sword huh?

      • [tomdarch]

        Corporations and unions are not equivalent.  No one can speculatively buy a share of a union.  A union is fundamentally its members and nothing else.  Corporations are just paperwork mechanisms for dividing up the full or partial ownership of a company (a wad of assetts – buildings, patents, stuff in a warehouse, etc.)  Just as a union is a group of workers sharing their common interest, I think that shareholders in a corporation should be able to organize and make political contributions that they think will benefit themselves vis a vis their stock in a company.  That organization of shareholders (US citizents) should, like a union, be able to influence politics.  But the corporation, being nothing but a paperwork mechanism, should not be able to make political contributions, or otherwise interfere in democracy.  This obviously goes against the underlying thinking of Citizens United, but my point is that people are people, corporations are not people, unions are groups of people, and thus, unions and corporations are not equivalent in terms of their role in US politics.

• [Harlan Harris]

  If you’re that smart and you work that hard, I wish you *would* work in an industry other than finance! Jobs aren’t zero-sum. If you can increase the productivity of some other industry, and increase economic growth, that would be *great*! Everyone will benefit. Unlike your working your current bloodsucking job.

  • [deliciouspineapples]

    Unpleasent as it is , they are right.

    They are smarter than you and probably are willing to work harder and are more driveven and all that leads to one of the hidden costs of the massive imbalance in regards to compensation in the financial sector. 

    The best and brightest,  who used to be spread around fairly evenly into academia and business and government and law and all that other crap where we need bright, driven people are instead being disproportionately eaten up by the greater compensation and ‘prestige’ of the financial sector when they could be doing something useful.

    • [ROSSINDETROIT]

      “The best and brightest,  who used to be spread around fairly evenly into academia and business and government and law and all that other crap where we need bright, driven people are instead being disproportionately eaten up by the greater compensation and ‘prestige’ of the financial sector when they could be doing something useful.”
      Not to mention Research, Engineering and Medicine.  Want to know why the USA doesn’t appear to lead in these areas any more?  Take a look at all the college graduates employed making new financial instruments instead of new technologies.

    • [John Delaney]

      Willing to work harder, perhaps, but tell that to single mother working two jobs just to make ends meet. I’m not that mother, but I work pretty hard myself, and I’m sure most of the people posting in this thread do as well.

      Smarter, probably not. 

  • [Chris Hartman]

    Well said… Harlan. 

• [LikesTurtles]

  It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
  — Upton Sinclair

• [The Life Of Bryan]

  As a member of the 99%, I create value five (and sometimes more) days a week. Specifically, I show up with my tool bags and turn ten thousand dollars worth of equipment into fifty thousand dollars worth of equipment. I do this using my knowledge, my experience, some specialized tools, and my bare hands.

  What those fuckers do is leverage and gamble on the value that myself and others like me have created with our hard work. Is it too much to ask that they be half as honest about what they do all day as I am?

  • [Lee Dannascher]

     Agreed!
    The speculative nature of the finance system produces nothing.
    so how does a host rid itself of a parasite?

• [Chuck]

  I think it was Lehman brothers that gambled and lost.
  I think it was AIG that bet $100 billion on subprime mortgage bonds and lost.
  Maybe the casino owners shouldn’t have been gambling in their own casinos.
  It’s true that the average Wall Street trader didn’t make these decisions.
  And no one was forced to take out a mortgage their couldn’t afford.
  But if the taxpayer is expected to take the loss, it shouldn’t be surprising that we insist that the gamblers pay taxes too.

• [David Hall]

  Do you know it was from someone in the Chicago Board of Trade who “delivered” this (apparently plagiarized) note?

  Don’t fall into the trap of being provoked by an unknown provocateur.

  • [ROSSINDETROIT]

    Yes, this has been going around for a while in email form.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see it being taken up as a manifesto by financial industry workers.

  • [That_Anonymous_Coward]

    I’m playing the odds, from the brilliant minds who posted a sign saying “We are the 1%” in their windows this makes total sense.

• [Justin Sabe]

  I’m wondering about someone who would post that strongly worded of a rant but self censored writing the word “asses” in the last paragraph. That just doesn’t go with the red meat eating clawing the way to the top swaggering image they want to portray. 

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  One of my coworkers was a stock broker.  He has now ‘taken’ someone else’s job.  It involves brooms, mops and lots of smelly chemicals.  I doubt the writer of the note would be so glib if he knew what sort of work many of the 99% do.

• [Remy Porter]

  If you can prove yourself more qualified to do my job than I am, you’re welcome to it.

  But 1) you ain’t gonna be, 2) you ain’t gonna work for the salary I pull down.

  Douche.

• [cassandra schoon]

  If I ever saw a trader, CEO or otherwise wealthy person leave anything more than a 5% tip, I’d die of shock. Rich folk don’t get rich by spending more than they have to on the help. I’ve balanced enough rich dudes’ checkbooks to know that they don’t spend big unless the end result is more for them or their mistresses (by proxy: more for them). 

• [Marja Erwin]

  Shouldn’t that say “it’s our job to take money”?

• [Mordicai]

  I can’t get enough of the “profit motive” as an argument, because it is one of those things you could use as an excuse for ANYTHING.  “Why did you donate all that money to charity?”  “Oh, I’m just doing the best I can to maximize returns for our shareholders, in this case, supporting charities for good PR!” 

  Or OH here is another really good one: “Hey do you want to unethically bundle dangerous high-risk loans for resale?”  “No!  I am in the business of making money, & since I’m not a freaking dog, I understand that my actions impact more than just RIGHT NOW, & that sort of behavior is irrational, because it will result in us & everyone else losing huge amounts of money!  Profit motive!”

• [tylerkaraszewski]

  Hey, maybe this whole thing is starting to work, a member of the 1% finally noticed that people are upset about something!

  • [Drew_Gehringer]

    Admittedly he’s wrong about what, exactly that ‘something’ is, but hey, I guess it’s a start…

• [Guest]

  The only thing they’re qualified for is stealing the cream off the top of the milk. 

• [MrJM]

  As someone who’s been lucky enough to spend his entire life around cops, black belts, cowboys and military veterans, I’ve learned that true bad asses never feel the need to talk about it — much less put it in writing.

  Poseurs, on the other hand…

• [Tommy Timefishblue]

  He writes all of that shit, and the part he thinks is too vile to show is the word “ass”.

• [Guest]

  Trader machismo is so cute. Very grrrr :) Of course, there’s one primary reason they work as they do – the craploads of money they make for doing so; remove that and I’m doubting they put in the long hours and avoid bathroom breaks. 

• [habbi1974]

  for some anti-OWS shit, please read the comments on the linked page. I’ts kinda refreshing.
  I’m transcribing some:

  “Well, Joe Trader, we’ll take you seriously when you start scrawling your missives on cardboard with a Sharpie. Until then, pony up for my student loan! And bring me some cocoa. ”

• [Pag]

  Occupy Wall Street isn’t about getting money without working, it’s about working but not getting a fair share of the money. Clearly whoever wrote this letter doesn’t understand that.

• [Guest]

  Also, this is more than a faint whiff.

• [John Delaney]

  Before going to graduate school, I was working as a civil engineer.  I worked for assholes like that. People who complained about their bills, and got angry when city regulators told them that they couldn’t do exactly what they wanted.  I had to work pretty hard long hours, too, and never expected to make half of what they make on Wall Street.  I think what erks me about this “letter” so much is that the writer puts so little value on what other people in society contribute.

  EDIT: I never expected to make 1/10th, probably even 1/100th…

• [Guest]

  Banking adds no value. 

  • [Colin Watley]

    Of COURSE banking adds value: without banking, society would be reduced to the level of bartering dead animals and rocks. Capital for investments, futures to hedge risk, etc etc etc. Without banking, society as we know it would collapse completely.

    The financial industry’s job is NOT making money, it’s allocating it. The money it earns for itself are merely its fees, and wankers like whoever wrote the original screed and the Chicago trader who gleefully dropped it onto the protestors have mistaken the money entrusted to them as being theirs.

    Apparently this is a common mindset among thieves like pickpockets and burglars: once they’ve decided to steal an item, in their mind it becomes THEIRS, and they get wildly angry if someone prevents or frustrates them from taking “their” property.

    • [Guest]

      As I said to the other dude, I did not say that banking is without merit or should be done away with.  I said it adds no value. It has a cost.

      That the cost of banking is externalized does not make it invisible to the rest of us.

• [Ambiguity]

  The guy is obviously a jerk, but he does have one or two valid points. I actually don’t remember people complaining about Wall Street in the 90′s when so many were getting rich on paper.

  • [Michael Hasse]

    Actually, quite a few did, including a portion of the 1%.  Just Google for the word “bubble”.  The foolishness perpetrated on Wall Street is always recognized long before the damage is done.
       The problem this time around is the game was rigged to A – remove the checks and balances that previous lessons had taught us needed to be there, and B – leverage the politicians enough that there would be no repercussions.  (Think of all the illegal stuff that’s gone on since 9/11 and the complete lack of pursuit of any of it on legal grounds.)
       Like taking candy from a baby?

  • [Colin Watley]

    Of course: nobody complained because they were being assured–up, down and sideways–that the gains were real and expected, that the people managing the money knew what they were doing, and the magic of unhindered capitalism would always set things flowing upward. They believed the carnival hucksters–and, I suspect, the carnival barkers even believed it themselves.

    • [greycanuck]

      Some people ‘complained’; you may not have noticed as the retirement funds of our parnets were eaten.

  • [jere7my]

    I actually don’t remember people complaining about Wall Street in the 90′s when so many were getting rich on paper.

    See American Psycho and Michael Douglas in Wall Street for the public perception of day traders in the late 80s and early 90s.

  • [That_Anonymous_Coward]

    Because the people complaining smelled bad and begged for change, we thought they were just to lazy to work.  We paid taxes and there was a warm bed, full belly for all of them from our tax dollars.

  • [MrJM]

    I actually don’t remember people complaining about Wall Street in the 90′s when so many were getting rich on paper.

    And because you weren’t paying attention… what exactly?

  • [Modusoperandi]

    * Unemployment rate (Clinton era) 6.91 high, 3.97 low. Unemployment rate (2010) 9.64 (source
    * Post-secondary tuition costs have tripled in the past 20 years, and the rules around student loans have gotten worse.
    * Some unionized groups’, like pilots, pension plans hadn’t been underfunded by billions or looted yet.

    In short, a bunch of people who are unemployed now weren’t then, students weren’t saddled with as much debt (and the job market was much better when they graduated) and what was left of labor hadn’t been screwed over yet.

  • [Sam Sandmel]

    It isn’t until the tide goes out that you can see who was swimming naked.

  • [SamSam]

    The guy is obviously a jerk, but he does have one or two valid points. I actually don’tremember people complaining about Wall Street in the 90′s when so many were getting rich on paper.

    No one got mad at Bernie Madoff while they seemed to be making millions either, but that doesn’t mean that what he was doing was right.

  • [morisse]

    Probably because the insanity level we’ve reached now was far in the future, job market was less desolated, and companies still paid salaries more or less related to the job done

• [Dustin Driver]

  I’ve always complained about Wall Street and the stock market.

• [Bangorian]

  I bet this jackass doesn’t even know how to start a lawnmower.

• [ill lich]

   This is apparently cut-and-pasted from a rant that has been circulating amongst traders for more than a year:

  http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/we-eat-what-we-kill

  Which makes me think whoever dropped the leaflet is basically just a troll trying to get a rise out of people. 

  “Average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat.”

  Well, look, you sir are just a small cog in the big machine that IS responsible for the economic mess.   Don’t take it personally, but you should also realize that it wasn’t the “average Joes” that crashed the market, it was big firms like yours– in other words it’s not “scapegoating” to blame the entity most responsible.  To be fair, congress passed laws that allowed the ridiculously vague derivatives that are the heart of the problem, but your firms are the ones that abused those derivatives and screwed us all in your quest to make profit by selling something you knew was worthless. 

  And don’t kid yourself into thinking you are going to get some “cushy” job teaching 3rd graders or doing landscaping, you’re going to find 100 people in line in front of you, most of whom will have experience in those fields.  Try Burger King or Wal Mart for minimum wage and no union benefits, or better yet, go to Georgia or Alabama and pick crops for 40-cents-a-bushel and see how you handle it.

• [ridestowe]

  clearly this person has never seen fight club

• [David Witt]

  First off, it isn’t Wall Street’s job ‘to make money’ – the money they make is a by-product of performing services for markets and providing capital for businesses. In the ‘olden days’ this money was made by investing in companies with sound business fundamentals who made money for Wall Street by performing well over the long haul. At the beginning of the Gordon Gekko era, these fundamentals were chucked, and the industry so degenerated that trolls like whomever wrote this letter don’t even know what the original purpose of Wall Street was. 

  Second, it’s funny how Wall Street likes to flog economics for everybody but itself – we have been told consistently that the Wall Streeters deserve their huge bonuses because without such outsized compensation, they would not be incentivized enough to perform ‘God’s work,’ as Lloyd Blankfein put it. If that’s truly the case, then its pretty absurd that these greed-driven characters are ever going to strap it on for $10/hr driving a bus or whatever.

  Third, these selective beliefs in economics have been used to justify moving jobs overseas – why should Wall Street be any different? These aren’t even American firms (ask them at tax time), so maybe it’s time to find some Chinese banks who will handle this work for more reasonable fees.

• [adamrice]

  I have never advocated the “eat the rich” position, but this guy could persuade me to change my mind.

• [Ceronomus]

  Gee, what jobs are they qualified to take? Well, I hear that Georgia and Alabama are looking for people to pick crops. Not needing to go to the bathroom, take breaks, or eat lunch? Those sound like perfect skills for this sort of labor.

• [TooGoodToCheck]

  Banking adds no value.

  I believe that this statement is not true.  Banking can actually serve a lot of really useful functions – most large projects hinge heavily on investment.  Without investors, I wouldn’t have a job (I’m working on a video game, and we burn through several years of costs before we see any profits).

  I think that banking has gone off the rails in a couple ways – the recent bailouts are a painful example of privatized profit and socialized risk – that’s bad.

  And yes, bankers seem to be making an ungodly amount of money – well beyond any actual value of their work.

  Also, my impression is that what happened during the subprime mortgage debacle was criminal – it certainly should have been criminal – an no one seems to have been held to account.

  So, anyway, there are definitely changes I’d like to see made, but I’m not quite prepared to indict “Banking” as a whole as being completely valueless and parasitic.

  • [atimoshenko]

    Banking can actually serve a lot of really useful functions – most large projects hinge heavily on investment.

    Investment which should come from the profits of the previous successful venture. If, on the other hand, you need to borrow before you can earn anything, then spend all of your earnings paying back what you borrow, and therefore, when it comes to the next investment, you need to borrow again, then the system has been rigged.

    Think of it this way.

    Financial markets allocate capital to most promising future contributions.

    Non-financial markets allocate capital to best performing past contributions.

    If both markets are efficient, one of the following two conditions must be true:
    1. Significant intRA-generational social mobility (best past performers are not most promising future performers).
    2. Small financial sector.

    Conversely, if there is both a big financial sector and low social mobility, then at least one of the two markets must be grossly inefficient.

    • [Trey Roady]

      Industry must rely on large scale investment, however. It’s a basis of risk vs. reward. There’s less risk in loans versus direct investment. Without a solid banking system, you can’t get value to projects that are in need of backing.

      Banking is, at the heart, a system of moving money that is not being directly used to those who need it for direct purposes. This is why interest is important. If you decouple this relationship you get mal-investment and inflation. Nightmare.

      • [atimoshenko]

        Banking is, at the heart, a system of moving money that is not being directly used to those who need it for direct purposes.

        And if the financial sector is close to 30% of GDP, then the people who need the money are never the people who have it. Who do we have to thank for that?

        The need for the financial system is to a large part generated by the financial system itself. Assume a slightly less self-reinforcing wealth distribution pattern (400 people owning more than 150 million people can only happen if being wealthy makes it easier to increase one’s wealth), and there a multiple simpler, more transparent, and more efficient alternatives for the cases in which people with a need of extra cash can be matched to people with more cash than they know what to do with. Two groups of people would lose out under such conditions – the intermediaries, and those who want to preserve their privilege without having to constantly compete for it.

        • [deliciouspineapples]

          There’s two issues there.

          Being wealthy is always going to make you more wealthy unless you plan to break the very basis of the concept of the economy itself.

          High Finance, at the level where you need to make real amounts of money move around, is hideously, absurdly delicate and complicated and frankly a terrible thing to make human beings do and is unlikely to get less so unless you create a system where there is no economic model larger than a small town.

          Because that’s about the level at where you start needing those intermediaries.

        • [atimoshenko]

          Being wealthy is always going to make you more wealthy unless you plan to break the very basis of the concept of the economy itself.

          Yup, we need fundamentally new economic grounding. The same way people in the 17th-18th Centuries needed a fundamentally new system of government. We cannot just tweak what we have and expect everything to improve.

          High Finance, at the level where you need to make real amounts of money move around, is hideously, absurdly delicate and complicated and frankly a terrible thing to make human beings do

          No it is not. ‘High finance’ mostly entails the creation of valuation models (and the occasional cap table scenario) that are detailed enough to seem convincing (though not so detailed that the mathematics become incomputable), and generally gel with the gut feeling of your boss (and/or whatever ‘story’ you are trying to sell to your client), but which ultimately have so many assumptions and educated guesses underpinning them that they are pretty divorced from reality (or are at least no more accurate than an eyeball extrapolation of a graph trend).

          You’re right that it is not particularly easy in the trenches, but more ‘trim a lawn with nail clippers’ unpleasant than ‘design a new CPU pipeline’ challenging. And most of life is not easy – finance is by far not the most chalenging.

          Besides the sole reason for all of this sideshow is that wealth is highly centralised, so big decisions are made by a small number of individuals, and those individuals want to console themselves that they are not just taking random potshots in the dark (even though they are).

  • [Guest]

     i did not say banks have no value intrinsically,  I said they add no value.

    They are a necessary institution, like policing and education, of a free people.

    A cost. Under other circumstances, a worthwhile one. 

  • [bwcbwc]

    Banking adds value. Churning, misrepresentation and ponzi schemes do not.

• [Aaron Clark]

  Of *course* we didn’t complain when things were going right.. I also don’t complain when the guy at Black Angus cooks my steak properly. But if he handed me roadkill instead of the Ribeye I ordered, you’re damn straight I am going to complain.

• [Colin Watley]

  Like Ill Lich said, this load of bollocks has been making the rounds for a while: I suspect this lazy trader simply copied-and-pasted from FT’s Alphaville blog. Personally, I would say to the original writer: go ahead, “Go Galt”. The world won’t miss you, and you’re not actually going to put any REAL workers out of jobs, since you’re clearly only interested in a FAST buck, not a well-earned one. Hell, you were too lazy to even write your own screed, preferring to plagiarize it instead.

  The only real change if the over-privileged wankers who are circulating this swill actually walked away — other than the financial industry doing what it’s ACTUALLY supposed to be doing, allocating capital to businesses that need it — will be that police departments worldwide would have to beef up their Fraud Squads, given the influx of these greedheads trying to go into the short con business would cause headaches for a lot of ordinary people.

• [vinegartom23]

  “What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.”

  I believe you simpletons have overestimated the range of your abilities. Good luck with that.

• [atimoshenko]

  We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money.

  And therein lies the root of all of the problems. Making money is a consequence, not a goal. Any function for which it is a goal perverts the market and corrupts the economy.

  • [bwcbwc]

    Bingo. Their job is to act as brokers to optimally balance supply and demand. At least in terms of the economy. Obviously their employers have other ideas, which is how we got into this mess.

• [Colin Watley]

  Investment which should come from the profits of the previous successful venture

  Of course. Too bad if you’re just two guys in a garage with a great idea and no actual previously successful venture. 

  • [Nathan Hornby]

    That’s what investors are for.  People of varying wealth would still exist without banks.  Banks are middle-men, middle-men are never ‘needed’, they just make things easier for 2 or more parties and take a fee for their troubles.

    Although I agree that banks aren’t the problem, their lack of regulation is.

  • [atimoshenko]

    Of course. Too bad if you’re just two guys in a garage with a great idea and no actual previously successful venture.

    Unless you have rich parents…

    And this is certainly a problem that any new economic order would have to solve.

• [occupyordie]

  My bet is that without the massive support system that their bullshit jobs shuffling non-existent money around grants them access to, they’d be as helpless as babes in the woods.  maybe more so.  The whole notion that these white collar assholes are willing to do blue collar work is laughable–if they were willing to put in actual labor, they’d have real jobs.  They have the jobs that they do because they want to make money off of other people’s sweat and not have to lift a finger themselves.  This posting foments the notions of class war that are floating around right now, and maybe ultimately thats a good thing.

  • [cassandra schoon]

    If anyone was willing to actually “take” the hard jobs in this country, there wouldn’t be sweet potatoes rotting in Alabama right now. 

• [Mujokan]

  This rant has been doing the rounds on the web for years. It appeals to a certain type of juvenile finance-industry drone.

  • [cassandra schoon]

    Is there any other kind? 

• [cassandra schoon]

  What these people fail to grasp (i.e., “when our money dries up, so does yours”) is that we all live in the same burning building. The penthouse might be the last floor to collapse, but it can’t stand on its own.

• [unit_1421]

  I suspect whomever was dropping those down onto the protesters has a dead toddler in their trunk.

• [Guest]

  This tone of this rant reminds me of the one by Mena Suvari’s character in ‘American Beauty’; the one where she’s basically expressing her fear of being perceived as ‘ordinary’, her fear of not being seen as ’special’.  It was the worst thing she could imagine happening to anyone, especially her.  The tone tries to come off as threatening, but instead sounds very worried and insecure. 

• [Jakeh]

  Is this guy for real?

• [vertigo25]

  This little note completely ignores the fact that when they gambled (and more than likely knowingly gambled on a losing hand), WE had to bail them out without even being able to say whether we wanted to or not. Money that could go to help the sick, hungry, or disabled; instead, went to banks and large corporations who were “too big to fail.”

  This kind of willful ignorance and twisting of reality is the mark of someone who can not handle the amount of cognitive dissonance they feel every time they see or hear about the growing economic divide in this country.

• [Boris Matev]

  A proposed answer from someone of the international 99 percent to the US 1 percent.

  At the inevitable next economic crisis, true value creaters like this scumbag will come crying again for publicly funded bailouts. When they have money it’s their Ayn Randian given right to keep it from the unproductive parasites. But when they lose it, their wealth turns out to be too big to fail, a social responcibility for everyone to preserve.

  All right, you can have your money, but we demand an important decision maker from every company that receives public money. To be hanged. People are executed in America for far less than destroying the global economy. Sometimes only for being born in the wrong neighborhood.

  How else are you going to learn responsibility?

  • [John Delaney]

    Jeez, enough with the hanging talk, already!

• [Anderson Council]

  Not that I enjoy posting NRO links, but this is a very old letter. It originates from at least 18 months ago.

  See it here new window

  • [Mujokan]

    Yes, it is simply trolling.

• [Franklin]

  “What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.”

  HAHAHAHAHA good luck getting a job in this market with no appreciable skills other than looking at screens, being an ass and doing some high-school level math.

  Is that why I see ex-wall streeters in NYC driving cabs with their resumes posted in the back seat??

  this rant is tinged with fear

• [desiredusername]

  I didn’t hear people complaining when…

  Enron stock was at $90
  BP’s Deep Water Horizon wasn’t leaking
  George Lucas released the original Star Wars trilogy
  etc…

  • [occupyordie]

    actually, we were complaining, but at that point we were being written off as nutty leftists.  go figure.

    • [Jenonymous]

      Um, no, they are NOT smarter and more driven.  They got into a Ponzi scheme at the right time, and there are plenty of day traders who didn’t make it.

      I’ve worked lots of different jobs in the course of my career.  One of them was in an Internet-related position at a brokerage.

      I can say firsthand:  A lot of the brokers I worked with–especially the younger set–couldn’t do a fucking thing except for their day trading job.  They didn’t have basic computer skills, they were uneducated other than what it took for them to pass their exams. 

      They had NO other transferrable skills.

      I would LOVE to see the arrogant little fuck who wrote that letter try–for even a day–to do any other white collar job.  Legal work…hrm…lemme see, no law school, so have fun trying to get a paralegal job.  Oh, wait, those got taken by new law grads who can’t make it into glutted firms as attorneys who manage to talk their way into para jobs as the “next best thing.”  Well then how about an admin job at those same firms?  Oh, snap, that’s where all the paras are going now that their jobs got shut out by fresh crops of unemployed law grads.  So how about the kids who went to secretarial school?  Well, there go all of your few remaining sales jobs and customer service jobs.

      Of course, he could try to do what a bunch of these assholes tried to do after the first dotcom meltdown shattered the dreams of many a young parasite who was flipping IPOs–get an HTML book and try to market yourself as a “website builder.”  Oh, yeah, that entire market segment is pretty much gone unless you work for a huge ad/design firm (which can usually mean and arts and/or actual programming degree) or if you’re the local Computer Dude in a small town/neighborhood.

      Of course, anything in the medical or construction fields also require skills that these douchebags just don’t have.

      Is Mr. Top Predator going to fix his own toilet?  Bind his own broken bone?  Empty his own bedpan when he’s got bowel cancer?  Boldly grow and distribute his own food?  Meet a need by setting up a grocery store in an underserved ‘hood? No no no no.

      I have found that those who have done best–from those I’ve stayed in touch with after school–are those who were smart, flexible, didn’t run up huge credit card debts, were willing to work shit jobs when necessary, and had more than one core marketable skill.

      Mr. DoucheResidue does not have any of those.  Take away his fat inflated salary and watch him die in the refuse of his own debt load that he helped create.  I’ll make the popcorn.

• [bwcbwc]

  Cute, the writer works in CBOT but is under the delusion that the purpose of the CBOT is to allow traders to trade for the sake of trading.  Trading for the sake of trading (aka churn or rent-seeking) adds no value to the economy. Trading to balance supply and demand is the legitimate function of these markets, but that seems to have gotten lost in the profit-seeking.

  • [Mujokan]

    It wasn’t written by anyone at the CBOT. It first appeared on a WordPress blog belonging to a low-level NY finance guy by the name of “SixGun” back in 2009. The domain is since expired but there is a reference to it on this Wayback page. http://web.archive.org/web/20100509060459/http://fillemandbillem.com/author/sixgundom/

• [phisrow]

  So, if I understand this terrifying threat correctly, the Big Bad Lord of the Trading Desk is threatening to stop sucking entire sectors of the economy dry and get a real job if we don’t continue to coddle him.

  Ok, I’m in. Let’s do it.

• [Matthew]

  “ I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years.”

  You also didn’t hear people complaining about Bernie Madoff until his charade came crashing down either.  Yet he’s in jail.  You should be too.

• [Michael Hood]

  You’re nothing but a top-tier predator whose environment can no longer sustain your bloated needs.

• [AbleBakerCharlie]

  Dear Leaflet-Bombing Chicago Board of Trade Douchecanoe,

  I don’t doubt you’re a fine hard worker. I’ve seen enough of your sector in action to know that you’re driven people, who often came from excellent schools, and all that. Believe it or not, though, *none* of this kerfuffle stirring outside your windows *has a goddamn thing to do with whether you are a hard worker, or a smart one.* I like hard workers. I like smart workers. I like them working for me, I like working for them, and believe it or not, most days I don’t even mind losing to them if we go head to head. I might even be so generous as to say that many of you are, just as you say, people with the get-up-and-go constitutions to succeed at whatever you do. Maybe. But good for you in any case.

  The point that all those angry hoardes are trying to make is that all your hard work is very often at cross purposes to any decent social ethic, good governance, the objectives of your customers, and very often your deep-down foundational function of efficiently turning deposit into investment.

  Also, that all your fuming and posturing about how hard you work obscures the fact that the data is quite clear that the majority of your fee-scavenging trades are losers, and that, by the same token, most of you could be replaced by monkeys making coin flips, which would actually suit your customers better, given that your average monkey doesn’t know which buttons to push to hop onto economy-halting bubbles, or throw money at Congress to make it clear that if they suffer the indignities of a marginally tax rate that existed when they were in school, they will take their ball and go home- to a city that is cutting essential services for want of revenues in the most physically productive time in the history of the species.

  History is quite clear that sending most of you home to wash your own cars (my goodness, you’re taking just the decent, family-feeding, fulfilling job I was searching for! Oh, wait, that wasn’t it,) would be a net win.

  Oh, and by the way, you know who are really good tippers? Other waiters.

• [bardfinn]

  “We eat what we kill.”

  Yep. You do. And if it weren’t for the efforts of the people you’re screwing over, your life expectancy would be 35 years, you’d die of cirrhosis of the liver, hepatitis, polio, shingles, a heart attack, the plague, etcetera, and — by and large — your life would be nasty, brutish, and short.

  What you don’t seem to understand is: You eat what you kill. What you’re killing is /starving human beings/. Short corn futures again, motherfucker.

  The best and brightest of the world’s intellect don’t spend their lives causing themselves permanent bladder damage and hepatic failure for the sake of a thousand dollars a week.

  • [glamaFez]

    Like….but you left out “bone cancer”.

• [GlenBlank]

  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.

  No, it *does* matter.  It’s your job to make *investments* that create value – but you’ve rigged the game, turned it into a gambling parlor where you can make money even when value is destroyed.  

  You’re ‘making money’, not for doing anything useful or valuable, but rather, for nothing more than betting correctly.

  Even when you’re betting that things will get worse, not better.

  And that’s one of the things that needs to change.  Profit should be a reward for creating value, not for winning an arbitrary bet.  You’re investment banks, not casinos.
  

  Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? 

  Well, yes, actually.

  we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore.

  Oh, please.  You don’t leave 35 percent tips *now*.  You and your ‘business dinners’ are the reason so many restaurants have a ‘minimum gratuity for large parties’ policy.  Otherwise, you’d bring twenty people to a restaurant, spend three or four hours being loud and drunk and obnoxious, and then leave a five dollar tip. And think you’re being generous.  Believe me – I’ve seen it.

   We eat what we kill

  Oh, please.  Spare me the macho posturing.  It just makes you look ridiculous.

  Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves.

  NO ONE wants to ‘take you down.’  This is probably the most important thing you need to understand.  No one wants to destroy you, to eliminate your jobs. 

  What people want is for you to become productive members of society again, making money by creating value.  

  Nobody begrudges you your big paycheck when you’re making good stuff happen, but they’re getting tired of you acting as gamblers – gamblers who fleece your own casinos, and then demand billions in bailouts when the casino looks like it’s going bankrupt.

  Bailouts that tank the economy and destroy the jobs of people who do create value.

  We don’t demand a union.

  Because you don’t need a union.  You’re already overpaid.  Unions are for people who need the leverage of collective bargaining to force capitalists to pay them a living wage.  You’re so far above ‘living wage’ you don’t even know what it looks like (hence your risible remarks about ‘cushy jobs’).

  Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half.

  Again, overtime and time and a half are instruments designed to keep people from being forced to work long hours without fair compensation.  You work long hours voluntarily because your compensation is already more than fair – that’s why you’re happy to work those long hours.

  You really need to understand that no one is trying to destroy you.  No one wants to ‘take your stuff.’  

  They just want you go back to being contributing members of society – like you were for many years before banking deregulation and tax breaks for the wealthy turned you into selfish, amoral gamblers who don’t care how much damage you do as long as it lines the pockets of you and your wealthy clients.

  And you should want that, too – because if you *don’t* change your ways, the time *will* come when people *do* want to take you down – to line you up against a wall and shoot you, to string you up to the nearest lamp post.

  And when that happens, everyone will suffer.

  But not because you’ll be taking our jobs.

• [Diamond Jim]

  Thanks, I knew I’d seen it somewhere too.

  (That’s a reply to amanicdroid way upstream.)

• [Bruce Arthurs]

  This is a prime example of what I call Scottsdale Syndrome, the mental attitude show by the rich (and sometimes the wanna-be rich):  “I drive a BMW, so fuck you.”

  • [Navin_Johnson]

    “Worthington’s Law”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF8wLg5Asgo

• [ZikZak]

  I love it!  Finally, the class war is coming out into the open.  These people have been living fat off us for  decades, and the only reason we put up with it is because for some reason we thought they were our friends.

• [deliciouspineapples]

  That’s the thing though. All those top of his/her class, varsity athlete,  and volunteered at a soup kitchen to pad out his resume types? Yeah. He was an asshole. But he was bright and driven and used to do useful things.

  They’re the guys the financial firms are eating. They’re the guys who are actually getting rich.  Of course there’s a bunch of shitty business school guys there. But they’d be there anyway. I mean, it’s nice to pretend that we’re smarter than these people because something something real world something weird resentment tech types have for non-tech types who end up with authority over them something but the brain drain is a serious problem and it’s been one of the things that’s been fucking Americas economy.  Wall Street has stolen all the people who worked and thought and did things until sane people would break. It even has your best mathematicians, because love of the beauty of numbers really can do jack shit against six figures.

  I propose kidnappings.

• [Phikus]

  Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to go through all the posts here but I wanted to reply to the statement while my rebuttal is fresh in my mind:

  Clue:  It’s not your money we want.  We’re not dying to be you.  What we want is for you to pay your fair share of taxes to fund public education and help rebuild our failing infrastructure that YOU USE every day.  What we want is to restore regulations that were lifted which allowed 20% of the economy to get zapped in one swell foop to the detriment of EVERYONE else!  What we want is to dissolve the “pay to play” system that ensures that our government bows to YOUR interests, instead of the People’s.  YOUR GREED has broken the planet.  Before it’s too late, please get out of the way and let the People fix it.  And please google the 99% Declaration before spouting off with inane elitist bullshit like this.  Thank you.

  Also: http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-finally-breaks-down-and-begs-its-smart-peop,26450/

• [Deke]

  Dear Deluded One: Please let us know when Wall Street is interested in giving back your big bonuses for screwing up. Then again, perhaps you were someone who refused yours out of principle.

• [ghostbear]

  In essence the statement is correct but it isn’t complete. Not everyone involved in the financial industry are evil.  A robust Wall Street benefits us all. 

  The problem that came up is that firms like Goldman Sachs and Magnastar saw what was coming and rather than sound the alarm to warn people and stave off a mess they instead took that information and used it to make more money. That’s why AIG owed Goldman so much money on those default swaps. Goldman set it up that way. Those are the people who should be paying for their misdeeds.

  I reiterate my disdain for these insipid OWS people. They are protesting at the wrong places. They need to protest at the DOJ, SEC, and the White House as to why they aren’t prosecuting anyone. When Enron went down the Bush administration punished Enron and the companies that abetted their activities. Why isn’t that happening now?

  Also OWS you aren’t going to make a difference looking and smelling like a bum and having no coherent message.

  • [Stephen Smith]

    “I reiterate my disdain for these insipid OWS people”

    “When Enron went down the Bush administration punished Enron” …I reiterate my disdain for asshats like ghostbear. Hey clowna$$, was the Iraq War vet one of those “smelly bums” you are referring to?

  • [atimoshenko]

    They need to protest at the DOJ, SEC, and the White House as to why they aren’t prosecuting anyone.

    Because nothing illegal was done. Troublesome regulations were gotten rid before people acted in ways that would have violated them if they were still around. But mostly, it is just the design of the system that is rotten to the core.

  • [Joshua Bardwell]

    Also OWS you aren’t going to make a difference looking and smelling like a bum and having no coherent message.

    Too late. They’re already making a difference.

    http://www.alternet.org/news/152860/the_stunning_victory_that_occupy_wall_street_has_already_achieved

  • [Navin_Johnson]

    The Bush admin started TARP, just to remind you.

    They are protesting at the wrong places. They need to protest at the DOJ, SEC, and the White House as to why they aren’t prosecuting anyone.

    Wall St. is the puppet master, those people are merely the puppets.

• [SarahKH]

  The sad thing is the people writing these messages are not the 1% people are so enraged about.  They might be very well paid but they aren’t the 1%.

  It’s very telling that they neither realise this nor the fact they are as utterly disposable to the ’1%’ as the people in the tent farm are.  I hope that at some point in the future they find out what those much higher in the food chain think about them; with all the consequences that can bring. 

  • [Stephen Smith]

    Right on, Sarah. My sentiments exactly.

• [SomeGuyNamedMark]

  I seriously doubt any of these douches could take over my job.  They are unqualified for anything except monitoring prices and being generally sleazy.  I wouldn’t trust them in my organization.

  Seems every time I see some show on a person who led a criminal double-life they worked as a broker or in commodoties trading at some point.

• [Stephen Smith]

  We notice he didn’t sign his name. We tend to notice these things.

• [Genre Slur]

  I love it when coke heads try to rant in a sincere fashion. It really wets my pants.

  • [msbpodcast]

    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

    These people are protesting on Wall Street because they don’t have anywhere to go and they don’t have jobs now.

    You’re going to take bupkiss… Its sad when I read these ranters being so far off the mark.

• [Soliloquy]

  You know, it’s not a good idea to poke the bear in the cage. Eventually the bear gets out, and mauls your ass.

• [tinyinkling]

  The problem with this is that just like a gambling addict, Wall Street and Congress gambled it *all*. McCain loves gambling, but he always has his wife’s inheritance to fall back on. When Countrywide/BofA runs up my mortgages up past median incomes, and JP Morgan/Chase offloads skilled workers to Walmart, and the government goes along with pensions being raided, we’re all in on a game we didn’t choose that’s stacked against us. 

• [lavardera]

  Hire an ex-Wall Streeter? What are the chances I would ever trust him enough to give him a job… I suggest he get used to an extended time on unemployment. During that time he might empty his 401k paying for his big house, and eventually sell it or be foreclosed. Maybe take that Wall St. gig off your resume…

• [Vicente Lopez]

  I work in service. These motherfuckers don’t tip /shit/. Also soooo many of them try to skip out on their tabs like whoa.

• [deliciouspineapples]

  The issue with a personal model is that after a certain point you’re dealing with sums of money no individual investor is going to have. I want to build a new factory, for example.  So I need a couple of hundred million dollars. And I can’t float more stock because my existing investors in my business would be less than pleased. So I need a coalition of investors.  Eventually, it’s easier to deal with an established coalition of investors and they’ll have a middle man and we’re back where we started. The evolution of the investment model tends to lead to variations on our current model. Someone is going to have to handle those huge amounts of money because banks aren’t just there to loan you money to buy a hat shop and not every business is going to be a venture capital setup from two plucky lads with a great idea.

  Sometime Serious Boring Business has to be done with Serious Boring Business Money and  I haven’t really seen an alternate model that accounts for that, since they all tend to focus on the sexy side of things.. So yeah, you’re inevitably going to have someone in the middle. And that person is going to make a great deal of money because how could they not? I would be very disappointed in someone who worked in investment who didn’t make more money than me. It’d mean he was bad at his job and I wouldn’t trust him with my damn money.

  The issue is when the middleman views his position as an independent entity rather than part of the whole.

• [randomname]

  What this guy seems to not notice is the fact that most protesters are youngins. We were literally to young to gamble with 4o1k and stocks and bonds in the go-go 80′s and 90′s. Now we have to pay for your casino losses? FU!  You gambled on market lies, lost, and are now taking it out on the children of the 80′s and 90′s. Now we are now old enough to realize what you did and we are pissed and we will tear you down…

• [machinestate]

  ohnoes the 1%’er’s are all gonna take my mcjob away because they can work 80hour weeks. what a crock of shit.  i work for the fed, you better believe i’m a 99%’er

• [machinestate]

  Reminds me of a great joke, of MINE (tm, ©, etc)

  So two investment bankers are staring out the vented window of the executive washroom, looking 110 floors below.  They can just barely make out  some rank-and-file employees hurriedly finishing their brown-bag lunches on the stair below. 

  “J.H., have you ever known trickle down ecomincs to work?  I mean, really work, as in instantaneous results?” The first one says.

  “Nah, indulge me.”

  The first banker unzips his fly, and pisses out the window, while his stream falls he says to his colleague, “Now this is the trickle-down part”

  J.H. chuckles a bit, “Okay, so wheres with the economics?”

  “See those people still dawdling on lunch down there?”

  He looks down.  “Nope, not anymore”

  “That’s the idea!”

• [Kent108]

  The trader does make one excellent point: nobody complained when what Wall Street was doing enabled their 401ks to double every five years. (If yours doubled every three years, I want to know who was managing your accounts.) Similarly, nobody questioned it when they told you that you can afford to buy a house that’s 10 or 20 times what you make in a year. Nobody forced you people to take the sketchy deals you were offered, but you all wanted to you didn’t need to deny yourself a little and put some money away in your savings account. You all wanted to believe you deserved that huge McMansion, that third car, that new iPod every year, those expensive (and ugly) clothes you saw advertised in Vogue. Well, you didn’t. But you don’t want to hear that, do you? Because you’re special, you’re smart enough, you’re good enough, and god damnit, people LIKE you. (Hint: none of that is true.)

  Maybe it’s just New York City, but every day on the subway I overhear people bitching about how their unemployment checks are going to run out, how they can’t make rent — and then I look, and they have the latest iPhone, they have these couture purses, maybe an iPad and all the trappings of the faux riche, and they have a few bags laden with goodies from Armani and Prada and Bloomingdales. And I can’t help but lose any sympathy I was beginning to have.Wall Street in the past 10 years acted like a corner drug dealer. But drug dealers don’t force you to take drugs. They don’t stick a needle in your vein or powder up your nose. You were the ones who said, “Gimme some. Gimme some cheap credit, some money for nothing.” Maybe they knew it would kill you. But you should have too, so your addiction is more your fault that Wall Street’s.Withdrawal’s a bitch, isn’t it?

  P.S. No, I don’t work in finance or on Wall Street. I am, however, one of those guys who DID use common sense and said no to those absurd deals being offered. Result? Doing just fine. My home and my stuff isn’t as nice as those of a lot of my peers. But I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to pay for my stuff, either.

  P.P.S. If Americans are hurting so much, how come when I head to the mall it’s always so crowded? How come you were all standing in line for the new iPhone, and will do so again for the new iPad, or the new Playstation or whatever’s the latest, neatest and coolest?

• [SeeChao]

  My doggy tells me he smells fear

• [franka_645]

  This person said that they were going to make 85k as a school teacher, so you know they’re either completely out of touch.  Thanks for playing though.

  • [Mister44]

    I am not sure if he meant it would be $85K a year for teaching, just that they would be ‘knocked down’ to a lower wage. It’s not as clear as it could be. But $85K is close to average for a college professor. I imagine a high end private school in an expensive area like NYC would have a good salary as well.

    I have no problem with people trading stocks etc. It is the people who are unscrupulous about it and end up screwing people over who I have a problem with. The whole poison assets from the mortgage melt down is a good example.

• [Alvis]

  He has a point: this isn’t entirely Wall Street’s fault.

  I put the larger portion of the blame on all y’all with this “I deserve things now, rather than when I’ve earned them” mentality.  No one forced anyone to get a mortgage and buy a house, but you all just -had- to get a house before you’d saved up for one.

  I’ve been saving my hard-earned money for years so I can one day afford a home of my own, and I have to say, I’m more pissed at all of you who over-borrowed than at banks for letting you do so.

  It’s mostly your selfishness and sense of entitlement that created this mess, not the bankers’.

  • [foobar]

    I put the larger portion of the blame on all y’all with this “I deserve things now, rather than when I’ve earned them” mentality.  No one forced anyone to get a mortgage and buy a house, but you all just -had- to get a house before you’d saved up for one.

    The very existence of mortgages forces anyone who wants a house to take one out. It dumps money into the market for houses, which correspondingly increases their sale value. If you took mortgages away, house values would fall to the point people could reasonably be expected to save up for.

    • [Mister44]

      I am not sure how you figure that. Perhaps it would be cheaper, yes, but it still costs X amount of money and time to make a house.

      • [foobar]

        Sure. Mortgages could be a positive social force if they were restricted to new homes, built where there was not one before. Allowing them on existing homes simply inflates their value and drives those who do not or can not get a mortgage out of the market. (And encourages tricky business to get them for those who shouldn’t have them.)

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    It’s mostly your selfishness and sense of entitlement that created this mess, not the bankers’.

    You see the thing is that people who are not math whizzes went to mortgage brokers and asked how much they could afford so that they could make a realistic purchase, and then the mortgage brokers fudged the numbers and grossly inflated their buying power, since that would increase their commissions. Those mortgage brokers are fiduciaries. They lied. They should be in forced labor camps paying off their debt to society.

    • [Alvis]

      I agree, bankers misleading people are responsible for their part in this, but at some point you have to hold people responsible for being able to realize when something promised is too good to be true.

      When we hear about people falling for a 419 scam, we feel bad they were taken advantage of, but can’t help but think that they should have realized you don’t get something for nothing.  Obviously, this mortgage mess has all the dressings of a legit arrangement, but I still feel like those taking out unsound loans are responsible for just wanting to believe so badly that they could afford such extravagances.  Of course, then there’s society to blame for creating this notion that home ownership is some god-given right, rather than a luxury earned through years of work… my point is that the boys on Wall Street are guilty, but there’s a whole lot more guilt to go around for the rest of us.

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        I agree, bankers misleading people are responsible for their part in this, but at some point you have to hold people responsible for being able to realize when something promised is too good to be true.

        The average person has an IQ of 100, and the US has one of the worst school systems in the developed world. I’d say that it’s impossible in practical terms for half the population to comprehend an amortized loan, even if they weren’t being deliberately hornswoggled.

        • [quartz99]

          The average person has an IQ of 100, and the US has one of the worst school systems in the developed world. I’d say that it’s impossible in practical terms for half the population to comprehend an amortized loan, even if they weren’t being deliberately hornswoggled.

          Hell, I have an IQ over 140, work in the finance sector (not at a bank thankfully), and _I_ have trouble following the way amortized loans work.

      • [quartz99]

        Alvis, you think this because you think that the paperwork and documents that the people taking out the mortgages got was straightforward and not specifically set up to fail, and that people didn’t have other problems that they couldn’t forsee. For instance, people are signed up for a mortgage at something very affordable per month, like $1200/mo. For the middle-low, this is actually cheaper than rent, so it makes sense to take it. They can pay this. Then three years later, their payments balloon to $2200.

        Sometimes it was because the person holding the mortgage (who at this point is no longer the bank who took out the mortgage because it’s been sold several times) held on to a payment check until after the day it was due so that they could start tacking on “late” fees. There’s investigations into that going on right now because it was apparently fairly common, and the late fees imposed by these investors are prohibitive and in some cases illegally high. Some places impose fees and higher monthly payments if you pay any part of it _early_ even. Fees are considered a major revenue source for a bank.

        For a certain class of mortgage, that’s actually in the repayment terms, not spurious fees, but this information is obscured by the broker because the broker and the initial bank don’t have to deal with it when the loan defaults. They get paid for bringing the loan in. Then they make a commission for reselling the loan as an investment. They will do anything, say anything, forge anything, to get as many people to take out loans as they possibly can, and that means hiding the parts of the loan repayment that would make the person go “Oh, I won’t be able to afford that.” There is a whole business around foreclosure. The way it’s set up now, they get money out of you whether you default or pay to the end. That’s the point.

        And intersecting with both those fraudulent practices is the vicious downward cycle of the economy. That $1200/mo mortgage may have been eminently affordable when you were working full time, but then you got in a car accident and were in the hospital for a week, and lost your job over it so now you’ve got $100k worth of hospital bills that your insurance mysteriously refuses to cover, and no income, and now no insurance either (not that it ever really paid for anything but at least you weren’t turned away at the door by doctors). You may be one of the lucky ones who managed to find a minimum wage job but you still have a mortgage and hospital bills and kids to feed. How do you pay your mortgage now?

• [foobar]

  Wall Street doesn’t make money, it takes money. Everything else is absolutely true; they would certainly siphon money out of the baseball card trade, if that were profitable to do.

  They are predators, and they do kill what they eat. The only question that remains is whether we, their prey, should allow them to continue to exist or not.

• [gwailo_joe]

  I like a good rant as much as the next guy, and this almost had me convinced for a second…

  But ‘We eat what we kill’?  Come on: the natural habitat of traders and bankers is…offices and skyscrapers; what are you killing and eating…pigeons?  And even if you were; I know damn well you’d get someone else to pluck it for you…

  ‘…35 percent tips….’  HahahhahahHaaahaaa (sniff) Oh that’s a hoot: go fuck yourself dude.  I am an inveterate 20% tipper because; I’ve worked in the industry…and I now make enough to share with my fellow members of the working class.  I’ve been around a few people with money over the years: the most generous in my experience are those that came from nothing and understand the value of sweat labor, and those that have very little but consider themselves fortunate enough to spread the wealth.

  This person is not of that caliber.  

  ‘Smart and vicious’?  Yeah, I see that…but don’t get cocky: there is plenty of room at the bottom…and many of the denizens are far, far more vicious than you realize.  Come on down fat a**!!

• [mpastoroff]

  My response:
  http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/dd405/mpastoroff/wall-street-letter.gif

• [Daemonworks]

  Most of the people who got shafted weren’t playing the game. They were the ante.

• [Austin Priebe]

  “I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas”
  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go to Gamblers Anonymous. That doesn’t make you innocent.

• [Adam Cahan]

  What about the crime? Did they mention the crime?

  “…because we’re smarter and we work harder and when there’s a fire in the crowded theater we’re the guys clawing and screaming and pulling hair and kicking people in the shins – you’re the poor schmucks getting burnt. “

• [Ian Brewer]

  “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.”

  Well, they’d better learn how to properly format a document first. :D

• [Christopher Locke]

  I didn’t spend beyond my means.  I have a very reasonable mortgage, drive a used truck, and have worked my share of shit jobs.
  There are plenty of traders who are responsible for this mess.  There are plenty of overconsumers who are also responsible for this mess.  I’m neither.  And yet, I’m paying part of the bailout.  And I don’t have time to protest, because I’m working seven days a week.

  This Wall Street piece of cat litter can cry me a river about his pee breaks.  And once he realizes how hard it is for *qualified* people to get a teaching job (and how little they actually make, and that they *also* work long hours), he’ll be in for a rude awakening.

  Mister Wall Street Poseur, please do me a favor.  Roll this little manifesto up into a tight little wad, and use it for a suppository.

• [AntagonistPrime]

  I get up at 5am and work to 10pm or later too, the only difference is that I CREATE wealth, whereas he EXTRACTs wealth. When my 60 hour+ week is finished the world is always a richer place, can he say the same thing?

  Getting rid of this parasite class is long overdue, they’re toxic and he’s right, what they do is gambling. Tax them or legislate them into the ground it doesn’t matter, we just need to get rid of these parasites.

• [That_Anonymous_Coward]

  They sort of remind me of those farmers where they have the new if your brown have papers or be deported laws went into effect.  They are all for the law, being interviewed on tv standing in the field of crops that are rotting and might just be the downfall of the farm.  All those hard working souls who were just robbed of their jobs by the damn illegals, a handful of them have shown up to fill the vacancies… and quit in under a day because its hard work for crap pay.

  I don’t think Wall Street types understand that they often make 10 times what the “average” person makes.

• [knoxblox]

  I wish it was the eighties, when traders wore French cuffs and suspenders, ‘cuz I really feel like snapping some suspenders right now…

• [optuser]

  We are the SS. It’s our job to kill Jews. Whether it’s a Pole, gypsy, homosexual, or POW slave, it doesn’t matter. We would kill Jehovah’s Witnesses if it were up to Hitler. I didn’t hear Germany complaining when the Fuhrer conquered mainland Europe and everyone was going to awesome Nazi rallies. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Nazis Anonymous because they killed too many Jews.

  Well now the Allies have invaded, & even though we hold the sacred German homeland for now, the Allies and the average Germans 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 kill Jews in the gas chambers anymore? Guess what: We’re going to commit suicide or run away to South America and let you explain to the world why we did what we did.

  • [Mister44]

    Hey – if you’re gonna Godwin, you may as well go all out. Bravo.

    • [optuser]

      Thanks. I was inspired by all the YouTube “Hitler flips out” videos. This letter almost reads like one.

• [Andy Pickard]

   This reminds me when Shooter McGavin tells Happy Gilmore “I eat little shits like you for breakfast” and Gilmore says “you eat little shits?” This letter was written to impress fellow traders.  Occupiers could give a shit.

• [flickerKuu]

  What this asshat doesn’t seem to understand is while the 401k’s doubled every three years it didn’t matter if you just cheated the system and stole  it all the next time around.

  If Wall St traders didn’t break the law (either written or moral) by literally cheating thousands of people out of their homes and retirement ON PURPOSE to make money, we might not have an issue.  But… they did. You STOLE from our babies’ mouths. 

  Take our job when Wall St is done?  What job?  What makes you think an employer is going to fire someone and give a pretentious jerk like you their  job? We have some great jobs picking fruit in the SouthEast- Be my guest, Traders. 

  ps. Christ you guys are assholes. Do you like Martinis? My friends have some special ones for you….

• [Aaron Armstrong]

  So, pal. what you might find out is that some of us would rather crucify you than let you have our jobs. talk is cheap. you can talk about being vicious all you want, but your fat ass is unlikely to survive a fight with someone like me. 

  • [dataninja]

    LOL, you think those expensive NY athletic clubs are filled with who? Bus drivers?

• [Matthew Weigand]

  Bring it on asshole! I’d like to see you try to take my job.

• [eryximachus]

  Send them to work at McPukes and Walmart.

  Watch the suicide rate skyrocket within a week.

• [Eric Hart]

  The writer is a Poe, right?

• [woot1]

  The Writer clearly does not work at the Chicago Board of Trade.  Traders do not work a full day like normal average workers.  At most they will work about 4 hours because that is how long most of the pits are open for trading.  I worked at the Chicago Board of Trade for a while on the floor and believe me, those traders know they have a good gig.  Whoever wrote this, wrote it on assumptions about traders without even knowing anything about their work.

  ***The writer does not work at the Chicago Board of Trade, because no one involved in trading works from  5am – 10pm.  Most trading pits are only open for 4 hours.  Any trader that has worked there would know this.***

• [Halloween Jack]

  This guy is wrong, but his attitude is absolutely unsurprising. These people are good at manipulating numbers, but few of them have aptitude for anything else. They think that all they have to do is get up earlier than anyone to take and hold their job, but if they tried to become teachers half of them would be fired within the first year and the other half would commit suicide. Go back to the This American Life episode where the bankers tell the reporter that the bailout had nothing to do with their continued financial success. They’re pathetic.

• [SuperGauntlet]

  Wow, what a dick.

• [k]

  What a spectacular collection of self-serving lies.  “Didn’t hear anyone complaining…” my huge hairy b*tt. There were millions of people point out the fact it was a scam, deliberately building a bubble to take advantage of naive investors, and they knew all along it would explode and leave this country in a huge stinking mess, and they didn’t give a d*mn as long as they got rich.

  I’m a mechanic. Go ahead, Wall street jerk*off – carry out your threat. You’ve spend the last 20 years doing nothing but schmoozing potential investors in 3-martini lunches. Try to take my job. I could use a laugh.

• [Tim]

  “What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.”

  Yeah, that’d be a lot more threatening if any of you actually knew how to do anything useful.

• [Stu Hackett]

  So when capitalism collapses investment bankers will become teachers and not captains of industry. Sounds about right.

• [dataninja]

  Without wall street there is less innovation. Without wall street money companies have hardly anything to invest.

  The truth is the U S Government caused this. They created 2 private enterprises that said they would buy ANYTHING Wall Street created, no matter how ubsurdly unfunded and unrealistic it’s not even funny.

  Without fannie and freddie promissing the buy up all the bad loans, nobody makes them.

  BTW, Bush sent people to the Democraticly controlled House Committee on Financial Services and  Senate Banking Committee 18 times, and all they did was either lie, or not even look at what was being said.

  Personally, I believe the USA deserves this. We have voted in morons like Frank and Dodd that think every penny everyone makes is theirs to spend and it has to end. And since most of amercia can be bought with unconstututional handouts, it’s going to take the next generation paying huge taxes to pay for their parents “free stuf” before we will see a seachange in who gets voted to run the USG.

  • [Modusoperandi]

    That’s odd. F&F worked pretty well from 1938 until the 90s. And more places did what F&F did. Places like “Wall Street investment banks”. And F&F sat out the middle of the bubble, losing market share, only coming back in at the end in a foolhardy attempt to slow the pop.
    As owned, incompetent or optimistic as Frank and Dodd are, they’re just symptoms, not the disease.

• [donovan acree]

  They gambled and we lost. They got our tax money and we lost jobs and homes.

• [rastronomicals]

  To any and all who are trying to make the case that the blame should be spread to all those who made an unrealistic home purchase let me say that I did in factas a first time home buyer  take out a mortgage on a 250,000 dollar home–beacuase everyone I was dealing with was too predatory to tell me a naive newbie the truth.
  Let me tell you there is VERY little left over each month aftter I pay the mortgage–and no-one should feel sorry for me either.  However when the thing that was sold to me drops from 250K to 85K in less than 24 months, meaning not only am I fucked right now, but will be for the rest of my life, THAT’S when I take issue with the way I was duped and that’s when I call bullshit on this spread the blame argument.

• [Brian Doom]

  The idea of this guy trying to work as a teacher fills me with perverse glee

• [NotInPoliteCompany]

  I thought “the 1%” were smarter than this.  When the 99% don’t have jobs because the 1% didn’t give back, the 99% will do whatever it takes to eat, to live … to survive.  And it won’t be by standing outside businesses chanting slogans or sleeping in tents in the park.

• [Kim]

  I would LOVE to see this guy try to successfully teach a classroom of 3rd graders. Be my guest. Please.

• [Jeff Fuchs]

  While he’s mowing his own grass and washing his own car, maybe he can fight his own wars!

• [Wrenchbender412i]

   Traders like this clown don’t make anything or employ anyone. All they do is buy assets at one price, and resell them at a higher price, skimming value from the economy for themselves. It is they who are the parasites, not the taxpaying peasants they like to sneer at from their balconies. 

• [Richard]

  Guess what, you’d better just hope that people don’t realize the truth:  Wall St. is useless.  A vast toilet that sucks money from the economy.  We don’t need it, it should go, completely. 
  When companies need capital, they can sell bonds.  The purchaser can be required to hold it for a certain amount of time without penalties.  A simple bond market could exist and Wall St. and all those parasites could go. 
  Hey Wall St., one final note: study biology.  When a parasite takes too much from the host, both die.  Who are you going to suck blood from when the economy tanks?

• [markyoshi]

  I think it’s funny that this guy thinks that somehow the top 1% are going to overtake the middle class…  you’re 1% of the population, dummy – pretty sure you’re not *that* productive, especially without the incentive of an insane income.