Legal Commentary

Short Memories on Wall Street

By Ethan Brown

Fascinating piece in New York Magazine this week on how Wall Streeters are adapting to the new realities presented by the financial crisis.

The most telling parts of the piece, however, come not from the writer of the story but from a source identified only as a "Goldman vet"

“When I talked to my friends in November and December at firms like Goldman, they would tell me, ‘If the government doesn’t bail us out, we’re going down.’ They really thought they were going to zero, and without exception, they all forget that now. They forget that their company’s stock was going to zero. It’s a state of delusion; they don’t remember those days. The flip side of that is, every guy except the Goldman guy remembers that Goldman was bailed out.”

[More...]

It's pretty astonishing--to put it mildly--that the Wall Street crowd has already forgotten about the TARP/bailout process which began just months ago. Indeed, this sort of "forgetfulness" says a lot about their maturity and intelligence--an intelligence, by the way, that they insist is worth millions of dollars per year in salary and bonuses.

The unrepentant selfishness and sheer stupidity on display in this piece should serve as a strong reminder of how we arrived at this crisis in the first place.

PS--If anyone on Wall Street would like to see a place where the "world has been turned on its head" please book a plane ticket to New Orleans, then drop me an e-mail and I will personally drive you to the Lower 9th Ward.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 20, 2009 (boomark / email).