We are wall Streetwe are smarter and more vicious than [dinosaurs] Posted by Stacy-Marie Ishmael on Apr 30 19:19.

If anyone knows who wrote the following email, which has been pinging around Wal l Street and across prop desks, tell em get in touch with FT Alphaville. We like the writing style We are Wall Street. Its our job to make money. Whether its a commodity, stock, bond, or some h ypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesnt matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didnt hear America complaining when the market was roari ng to 14,000 and everyones 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its no t a problem until you lose. Ive 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 go vernment 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 youre only going to hurt yourselves. W hats going to happen when we cant find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: Were going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. Were used to no t getting up to pee when we have a position. We dont take an hour or more for a l unch break. We dont demand a union. We dont retire at 50 with a pension. We eat wh at we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, well ea t that. For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too bus y working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd g raders and doing landscaping? Were 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 b uilding the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. Ill be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much. So now that were going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: were going to stop buying t he new 80k car, we arent going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinner s anymore. No more free rides on our backs. Were going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your mon ey. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours. The difference is, you ion and the Democratic he top of the pyramid, at a**es land directly om. lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administrat National Committee might get their way and knock us off t but its really going to hurt like hell for them when our f on the middle class of America and knock them to the bott

We arent dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going t o survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe M ainstreet our food supplywill he? and will they? Related links: Andrew Lahde bows out in style FT Alphaville This entry was posted by Stacy-Marie Ishmael on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 19:19 and is filed under Capital markets. Tagged with wall street. Post your own comment To comment, you must sign in or register Sign inRegister Comments Sorted by newest first Sort by oldest first Reportmdash May 7 2:01am Permalink Oh, please. Nobody s "taking down" Wall S

treet. Taking away your multimillion dollar bonuses for doing absolutely nothing of any use to society, maybe, reinstating some jettisoned safeguards to prevent further meltdowns, yes; but it s not like Wall Street is going to be shut down. Good thing, too - people like this couldn t hack mainstream American "cushy" jo bs, where large monetary bonuses simply aren t in the picture. Stop worrying; th ere ll always be a place for money-motivated adrenaline junkies. ReportQuantum May 6 7:12pm Permalink 5am to 10pm...dunno which imaginary trading desk this has been written about...o nce mkt shuts I dump on my ops guys and am off to the gym!! Reporthunter51$ May 6 4:53pm Permalink "What s troubling you is the nature of my game",-----from Sympathy for the Devil . by The Rolling Stones Traders are opportunists. Unfortunately, for the prey, o f course, and the rest of the other living systems, there may be unintended or i ntended destructive consequences. Traders employ the mammalian and the reptilian components of human beings for selfish advantage. Thinking about evolutionary s urvival advantage, one observes that birds, supposedly closest to dinosours in a n evolutionary sense, will call out as soon as daylight breaks, BEFORE THEIR BOD IES ARE ABLE TO MOVE SUFFICIENTLY TO FIGHT OR ESCAPE, because they lack internal temperature regulation. Thus, the mammal predator, having no such inhibition, w ill eventually take out the prey. The problem of focusing on the prey is that ot her data and consequences are excluded. Bank trading departments and hedge funds know where the weakness is. After all, banks will use debt for profitable advan tage and governments are, how should I say it, slow movers. ReportRoy Manns May 6 3:00pm Permalink Wells said the anonymous person without B***s "We arent dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now t hat Obama & his administration are making Joe Mains treet our food supplywill he? and will they? FYI some of us are old enough to know that we were doing just fine before you yo ung " It s all about me" with a KIA brain came along, we had a great Middle clas s without 401K, they were put in place to keep the workers quite so many of you get justify your 7 & 8 figures bonuses betting on other peoples money. Reportcuguy May 6 5:08am Permalink The problem with this email is the assumption that bankers can replace others j obs, but others cannot replace them. The issue is not the money bankers make, it s that their success has more to do with career choice than intelligence. When e ntering a particular career, a person is enormously benefited (relative to all h umans in all professions) by not having to compete against those who ultimately choose a career other than yours. I agree with email, bankers would succeed in o ther jobs - they are smart, sure, but relative to some smart engineer/professor/ other college educated person that just chose a different career path? Bankers d on t appreciate that they too are replaceable. Yea, a banker might take some tea cher s job, but she ll learn some excel and start pulling huge bonuses, buying a 80K BMW from an old banking buddy. The financial crisis was a crisis because bankers aren t that brilliant or speci al - they re probably like most of the population, flawed, and in the right circ umstances, willing to watch things collapse under their watch, but in this case, bankers happened to be employed within an integral sector of our economy. The p roblem is not that they made money, they choose a career that pays very well, an d others could have chose it. The problem is that they made money on the things that almost brought the system down, yet are not humbled by the fact that the cr isis exposed them for what they are - just like everyone else. Banks control the money in the system and must succeed for the economy to succeed. Understandable then that laws and regulations in place seem to appreciate that the banking ind ustry must be given some freedom to operate and flourish. Bankers are just a ben eficiary of this necessary (though somewhat unfair) reality. Despite this, the b anking industry has this attitude that they are just smarter than everyone else, like a super class of humans - and maintaining the attitude before, during and

after the crisis they caused. One would think bankers would keep quiet and talk amongst their banker friends about how lucky they got to choose a career that re quired only a reasonable amount of intelligence but resulted in a sweet paycheck and a US Treasury backstop. How much of that was because of talent, and how muc h of that was because they chose banking? No, bankers don t have to apologize fo r their career, but they could show some respect to equally capable people that chose different ones. ReportPdxguy May 6 4:43am Permalink @GS fan: Just for the record, it s spelled "illiterate". Ordinarily, I think it is cheap to point out spelling errors, because we often write quickly when posting to for ums. However, if you are going to impugn someone else s literacy, it behooves yo u to spell "illiterate" correctly. How are Wall Street banks as currently constituted the backbone of anyone s live lihood. As I said in my earlier post, investment banking is a legitimate functio n, but there is no evidence that having a financial sector as bloated and out of control as that of the US is currently is beneficial for the economy as a whole . Although I currently work in government, most of my career has been in the priva te sector, and I have nothing against corporations that produce goods and provid e services that consumers find useful. In addition, a well-regulated and reasona bly-sized financial sector is important in providing the capital needed by those businesses. What we don t need are a bunch of people creating derivatives and other kooky fi nancial instruments that serve no discernible purpose, and Western capitalism ha s gotten along fine without until the last 10 years or so. By the way, Wall Street has had the unfettered ability to do just about whatever it wanted to in the last 20 years or so. According to you Randian types, that s hould have ushered in an earthly paradise, and what happened? The economy was de stroyed, which we Joe Mainstreets will be paying for for the rest of our lives.. ..while the poor, oppressed Wall Streeters got bailed out with our tax dollars. There really aren t any curse words vile enough to express what I think of you a nd people who think the way you do. By the way, I was an economics major in college, who wrote papers arguing in fav or of abolishing the Glass-Steagall act. I at least had intelligence to grow out of my youthful folly - would that more people did. ReportPdxguy May 6 4:29am Permalink This is one of the stupidest things I ve ever read in my forty-odd years on the planet. How many people work on Wall Street altogether--20,000 or 30,000? I have no idea, but even if it s significantly more than that, the number would pale i n comparison to the total number of people employed in the US. Is some Wall Stre et schmuck going to come out to Portland, Oregon and take over my somewhat dull middle-class type job? I m quaking in my boots. I m not sure how it s going to h urt me if Wall Street people stop buying fancy cars or dropping big tips in Manh attan restaurants. Also, the US economy functioned quite well for years with a much smaller finance sector. I have little to no respect for those who make big money by creating ab stract financial instruments that do nothing but put money in their own pockets. While investment banking is a legitimate economic function, I think we d all be much better off if about 80% of the people on Wall Street had to leave and go d o work that actually produced some kind of tangible benefit. We need more engine ers, scientists, doctors, nurses and teachers and fewer professional gamblers.

Oh, and I have news for the writer of this trivial piece of trash - the ability to hold your urine is not considered a job skill in most professions (although I have gained even more appreciation for teachers by reading some of the other co mments). Finally, I m actually having trouble finding people willing to take care of my l awn, so if the writer of the article needs work, I ll be happy to pay him $15 an hour to mow my lawn and pull weeds. The elites in this country better wake up and smell the coffee - there are a lot more of us Joe Mainstreets out there than self-important Wall Street types and we are getting fed up with a small cabal of greedy pigs sucking up more and more of the resources for themselves while the rest of us have to worry about whethe r we ll be able to retire, send our kids to college or be able to afford even ba sic health care. I would love to see our own version of the Chinese cultural revolution, in which all Wall Streeters would be rounded up and forced to work in the fields....then maybe they d learn what hard work really is. I ll bet the person who wrote this article wouldn t last a day if he had to do that kind of work that migrant farm workers do. Excuse me, I need to clean the vomit off of my computer before it dries. ReportPhilip May 6 1:51am Permalink Right Stacy-Marie, a very good writing style. However, pointing in a very wrong direction. I bet it s a professionally crafted red herring. Explains your intrig uing long source search. Do you agree that the real Wall Street-Washington show is here: from which pot does a bailed out banker --e.g. from AIG (And It s Gone) -- loves to pay its lobbyists? Indeed, from the no strings attached TARP (To Avo id Regulating Politicians) pot! Reporteswarjj May 5 10:23pm Permalink too many contradictions. you wake up at 5 and work till 22. then you are also go ing to make your food, mow your lawn, wash your cars; yeah right. plus, no one i s asking them to not play their stupid game. just don t make it linked to bloody jobs that have no relation to this. you keep playing it inside the casino lik e in Vegas. no one on the street just outside the casino is losing his livelihoo d because of your losing money in there. you don t take the economy and invest i t. it belongs to everyone. you gamble with your money. when you invest in stocks and the market crashes, you are the only one that should burn. not me. i am com ing after you for taking my money to the casino ReportMandra May 5 8:20pm Permalink Nice one. Like it. ReportJack Staub May 5 7:50pm Permalink Dude, if you are half as smart and hard working as you claim, then why have you been wasting your time on Wall Street? You can make a lot more money by starting and building a business, and in the process you will create employment for hund ereds or even thousands. So stop wining and get going, we need the jobs! ReportSixgun May 5 3:54pm Permalink This was the original article that was posted on Sept 27th on www.thedopeycowboy .com and www.fillemandbillem.com. ReportSixgun May 5 3:48pm Permalink It s in your inbox ReportStacy-Marie Ishmael May 5 3:42pm Permalink Sixgun - can you email me the original or send a link to it? I m on stacy-marie. ishmael@ft.com ReportSixgun May 5 3:25pm Permalink I wrote this original articel on Sept 27th....at least the original version, it has been changed. Here is the follow up. http://fillemandbi...states-of-america/ ReportGS fan May 5 12:35pm Permalink

Whoever wrote this, thank you for finally saying it like it is! i dont think Joe Mainstreets realise that banks pay one of the biggest portion of tax that gover nment collects.. the very tax that pays for teachers and all other government wo rkers! Joes, where do u think your salary comes from? a little green lepricon?? a magic lamp??? or it just grows on trees!! you keep complaining about banks mak ing too much money, but if you use your gray matter for one second and learn eco nomic fundamentals, you ll realise that banks and other large corporations are t he backbone of your livelihood! ... And whoever said John Galt is a psycho (2nd comment from bottom) you are clearly as illetirete as my dog, and should not be thinking about Ayn Rand, let alone quoting her! ReportRohit Fernandes May 5 11:39am Permalink Brilliant... Reportdrocto May 5 2:03am Permalink OK, let s make this a game of Liar s Poker. I call this guy s bluff. Reportkiadragon May 4 10:06pm Permalink Come take my cushy job! When I am employed, I work seven day weeks. I work 70+ h ours per week. Most of the time I am on my feet. I get a thirty minute lunch. No company bennies. No Union. No Pension. What used to be double time is now time and a half. What used to be time and a half is now straight time. Sometimes its 75 hours a week at straight time only (gotta love contract labor ) I have a Bachelors in Electronics Engineering and work for the cushy automotiv e industry. Frak you, you whiny over privileged egomaniac. You wouldnt last a we ek in my job. Your manicure wouldnt make it a day. You seem to assume that all the other cushy jobs don t require the dedication, effort or education that yours does. I would pay money to watch to you try and fail at Real Life outside of Wall Street. You should try it...it would be a real ity TV hit that guys like me would watch while laughing our asses off at your ru de introduction to the cushy jobs we all hold. I make 85K a year on a GOOD year. Last year I made 30K. Asshat. Reportglentzakis May 4 10:05am Permalink And dinosaurs were not stupid. The were just "Too Big to Fail" but they did. Reportglentzakis May 4 10:00am Permalink Dear poster, You would be more sceptical if he/she would be your kids educator/teacher. You kn ow we dont stay young, single and without responsibilities in all of our lives. S ome of us at least, unless you are Peter Pan or a forgotten kid in Never Never L and. Most of us grow-up and growing up you realise that Greed, for lack of a bett er word, is good. Greed is right, Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, an d captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; G reed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of man kind. But Gordon Gekko was a fictional character and he even got jailed in the mo vie. Even Milken (the "Junk Bond King" of the 1980s who was partly used as a mod el for the character), was indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and fraud in 19 89. So be careful what your raw models are. Reportroman_pearce May 4 7:02am Permalink "Whats going to happen when we cant find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: W ere going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. Were used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We dont take an hour or more for a lunch break. We dont demand a union. We dont retire at 50 with a pension."

Sounds like the perfect Wal-Mart employee. Now we know where they got the idea f rom. Please Wall St, if there is a god, come take these jobs. You deserve the 16 k per year far more than anyone else does. None of those lazy Americans with "fa milies" and other priorities can compete with you. Please grab a mop and show us how it s done. Reportejs May 4 5:04am Permalink This guy does realize that very few gardener s jobs pay 30 million dollars a yea r for doing absolutely nothing productive, doesn t he? I had no idea that they h ad it so tough, though. Imagine, having to "hold it in" while waiting for a tele phone call. The horror, the horror! All I have to say to this arrogant, overly-p rivileged juvenile is, "Bring it on." Reportjgadms May 4 4:25am Permalink My friend, if you think that you are going to come off Wall Street and take anyo ne s job you are severely misguided. Let me tell you a bit about how social stru ctures work, how they protect their own, and how they close ranks when they are threatened. How they would rather see a thieving, conniving sociopath like yours elf starve in the wilderness before giving him a scrap of food. And how they can spot him a mile away. So if you do want that food on someone else s plate, you are going to have to fi gure out a way to take it. Because no-one is going to be offering you a seat at the table. ReportGuernroy May 3 11:35pm Permalink I note that Stacy-Marie limits here endorsement to the author s writing style . Is it just me, or does this sound like someone who really wishes he d been a 3rd grade teacher? It s not too late my friend. You could still be playing baseball in those long summer holidays. You would have to promise not to eat the kids th ough. Reportangry kremlinist May 3 7:25pm Permalink so you fight just like the ordinary people folk from third world should know sounds ridiculous if you ask me ReportDr. Hu May 3 4:28pm Permalink Can this be one of the men the heroes of Michael Lewis s "The Big Short" referre d to as "the dumb money at the table?" The unvarnished hubris may appeal to the FT editors, but the implicit immorality and the delusion that they re efficientl y allocating capital for the greatest social good should offend anyone who actua lly understands what these men have done to the global economy. It may take them 14 hour days to create bubbles and toxic derivatives, but I d rather they apply whatever actual talent they have to funding entrepreneurs who create jobs and t agible objects--and, of course, I strongly approve of his threat to downsize his own consumer footprint. Please cook your own food, and wash that $20,000 Kia wi th a garden hose. ReportDavros May 3 3:55pm Permalink Odious twerp. Reporttim_millar3 May 3 3:49pm Permalink "No more free rides on our backs." No more free rides on our backs! Can you believe this? Amazing. Reporttim_millar3 May 3 3:47pm Permalink Man, you really are just laying your sympathies right there for all to see, huh? Reporthonza1974cz May 3 3:38pm Permalink We are Wall Street. Aaaaaaand I am Jan from Czech Republic and have you in my PR DEL. You see, you dont even know what it means. If you BIG GUYS from NYC and Wall Street think you are the Sun of rest of peoples lives you are very wrong ! If I had to barter for the rest of my life believe me I would be happiest person on E arth! You dont create anything, even baker or butcher is more useful than bunch o

f mad guys running on floor and trying to guess what next thing goes up or down. YOU DO NOT CREATE NOTHING. Anybody is more than you and you can sink in your en ormouse arogancy! If you know what real enjoyment of life is come to European co untryside where REAL FOOD, NATURE AND NO MONEY HUNT MATTERS!! Love to freedom, l ove to life without money and stress. To hell with all Bankers and Wall Street A rogant pussies! Reportcoffin dodger May 3 3:08pm Permalink the individual that wrote this piece should take a gander at this: http://snipurl.com/vynpx ReportUser250434 May 3 2:28pm Permalink old "Dopey Cowboy" post ReportA Wall Streeter May 3 12:20pm Permalink Dear Email Writer, You are confusing a bull market for brains. Reportmojomogoz May 3 11:14am Permalink so many bad bankers nowadays ;-) Probably right though but, whoever did it, it p robably captures the mood of many...and the frisson is fun. Gives people plenty of chance to vent against people who deserve a bit of stick Reportblackshadow May 3 10:47am Permalink I m willing to bet whoever wrote this wasn t a banker- and if he is, he s a bad one. In an industry where discretion is key- you d have to be dumb dumb dumb to spout nonsense like that ReportYear11 May 3 8:55am Permalink Cum on if you fink yor hard enuf. Seriously though - start a business, employ some people, do the right thing. Reporthedgehog May 3 8:27am Permalink @ellington1971 very insightful ReportAustrian Banker May 3 7:36am Permalink It must be upsetting for quite a few "wall streeters" to find that life is so ha rd going when money isn t being given away. The truth is very few actually live up to Gekko standards, so when it gets tough, they are all out of a job and it m ust hurt to ego to realise you are not much better (probably worse) than the gen eral public you despise. ReportFran May 2 10:06pm Permalink I was expecting some elegant prose when i read the "we like You writing style" c omment. Unfortunately the note reads, imho, as if written by a whining immature who got a bloodied nose. And yet ..... after reading further ( elsewhere) i began to believe that not all are so smart after all, having been taken for a ride by their own employers too . Being oblig ated to invest some of their earnings/bonus in now devalued company funds, and h eavily over leveraged, the Wall Street company gave loans to it s employers to b ail them out when unable to cover their margin calls. Many were tempted by the l ure of even greater luxury lifestyles ( more is never enough) and took on financ ial obligations greater than their incomes. It s bitter pill to swallow, especia lly for those who think that they are so much smarter than the rest of us. Reportzogomojom May 2 11:57am Permalink @FT Alpha Mods - If there s anyway of preventing Taxloss from responding to Mojo s post please implement it now... Reportmojomogoz May 2 11:52am Permalink didn t know Godwin s Law...very funny, so true. Obviously we know that we have r eached a new age of enlightenment when it is no longer apt. But first we must tr averse the age of cant. Ultimately the market and the economy is currently run b y the canters...but the market and economy is greater than the powerful current sect. Rise up! Destroy the cant Reportcoffin dodger May 2 11:09am Permalink

It all comes down to Godwins Law. Even the Greeks used it a few weeks ago. Reportmark.chipo May 2 8:32am Permalink true say bamba clot, absolutly agree Reportsir incompetent mcbonus May 2 6:50am Permalink It is as incorrect as it is self serving....on civvy st. he will be Arthur Daley rather than a school teacher. ReportKathy Kadane May 2 3:17am Permalink I remember Hitler had a negative view of the American Main Street too. He was ju st this nasty. His complaint was that we were mongrels -- a weird DNA-mix that didn t rise to the heights of the pure (what was it? Caucasian? WTF are they Ge rmany, anyway?) And anybody with pure blood would beat USA out. Uh-hunh. Wall Street -- you re a mongrel mix too -- but you re claiming some special priv ilege that sounds really weird out here. (It is amusing watching you go down. Gl ug glug.) Hey! MIT grads! Go back to curing cancer! and meanwhile: any chance in your engi neering group of figuring out how to rocket all of Wall Street to Mars? Reportellington1971 May 2 2:50am Permalink http://jerseyjazzm...grade-teacher.html May I respond? Thanks: First off, allow me to be the first to welcome you to the teaching profession! W e always need bright, committed people to join us in educating the youth of Amer ica. I can see from your little speech here that you re used to hard work and yo u have a strong bladder: that s good, because you re not allowed to leave the ki ds by themselves for even one second, no matter how badly you ve gotta go. In fa ct, you can t even pick up the phone if your broker calls with a hot tip or leav e early when the new models roll off the truck at the BMW dealership. I take it you ve done everything you needed to do to get your license. No? Uh, l isten, passing the Series 7 doesn t count - you re in a whole new world here, my friend. You can t even get in the door of a school without a teaching degree: I d suggest math, science, or special ed, because you re not going to find a lot of work these days in Jersey in most other teaching areas (I assume you re a B&T -er - you re parroting Chris Christie s rhetoric perfectly). Of course, you could get into Teach for America or take the alternate route to c ertification. Understand this means you ll almost certainly land in an Abbott di strict - basically, one that has a lot of poor kids. But, hey, you ve stared dow n market makers - you can take on a class of 35 poor, jaded, disinterested 16-ye ar-olds and teach them algebra, no problem! Or maybe you can get that Kindergart en class of 28 5-year-olds who ve never set foot in a school, whose parents are nearly impossible to reach, and who don t speak English at home. Now, those summers off are going to have to wait, because you coursework done so you can trade in your provisional license d you re not going to get higher up in the pay scales without s degree - no, an MBA isn t going to cut it, sorry. Plus, you o work during the summer, unless you want to live on a salary ve got to get your for a full one. An at least a master re going to have t in the $40 s.

Oh, no one told you? Sorry - that $85K you re talking about is going to take you at least 20 years to work up to - and, again, you re going to need a masters in teaching (at least - most districts highest pay level is MA+45, which mean 45 additional credit hours; sometimes it s even MA+60). And the tenure? That s only in the district where you teach - when you move to a nother district, you lose it. So, if your plan was to start at a lower-paying di strict, get some experience, and then try to move up (which many teachers do), y

ou ll have to go through the three-year tenure cycle again. You d better build up your portfolio and get some good reviews. A word of advice : this "eating off of others plates" stuff doesn t really fly with administrator s. Teachers are collaborators; if they can t work together, they can t do the jo b. Besides, you aren t really judged by your work anyway - you re judged by the work of your students. Better hope you get a good group your first year... I m afraid I ve also got to tell you that the baseball coaching thing is probabl y going to have to go on hold for a while. See, extracurriculars like that are u sually reserved for people who actually have built up some cred. Maybe you can b e an assistant to start - probably unpaid. Hang around, work your way up - somed ay, you could be the varsity coach! Then you can deal with the booster club, and ordering supplies, and insurance, and scheduling, and academic probation, and b udgeting, and rule violations, and college recruiters, and... Oh, yeah, overtime and time-and-a-half: it doesn t exist in teaching. You get pa id the same now matter how long it takes to grade those 100 papers about The Tem pest. But you re used to those long hours, so no problem. Enjoy your weekend wit h the passive voice. Finally, let s talk retirement. Sorry, you can t retire until 62 if you want you r pension. Assuming you re 35 right now, you ll get about half your salary - if the system is solvent. You d better hope it is; you re going to be putting a man datory 5.5% of every paycheck into the system. You re only getting this, by the way, because of union negotiations. Plan on a comfortable but modest retirement - certainly nothing like you saw on the Street. Again, welcome to teaching. You re going to find some true satisfaction in the j ob; maybe not as "satisfying" as short selling and then driving a stock down, bu t satisfying nonetheless. Reportmargrit.ritzmann May 1 7:53pm Permalink It doesn t really matter who wrote this: it is a typical ranting of a deluded me mber of the global banking elite who fit the profile of pathological narcissist ic personality disorder . ReportUser3416872 May 1 7:47pm Permalink It will be interesting to see if the kids learn better when the teacher doesn t take a pee. Report/B May 1 7:13pm Permalink I d imagine this is a spoof. But even so, citing trickle-down as a valid means o f wealth redistribution? I think this gives a clear view of the level of economi c competence that went into this missive. So perhaps it is real! ;-) Btw most of the front office lot I interact with get in quite early and leave re ally early. We can never get any front office after 5pm. Reportalexandergreenb May 1 6:55pm Permalink "I didnt hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and every ones 401k doubled every 3 years." I was complaining. I knew a lot of people who w ere complaining. Anybody who could see what was in the cards was complaining. St op being so arrogant and stupid. Reportmasfontaines May 1 5:06pm Permalink Please please please I beg of you (Wall-streeters and forlorn wannabes)...why oh why do you think that serving callow youngsters with their knickers in an ubertwist of MONEY -- MY car MY house MY money MY MY MY could interest anyone but... you? You can always find some poor sod who will genuflect and clean your car, house; lawn; kids. Poverty does that to people. But find someone to respect you? I don t think so.

Hope those dollars make you feel good because it looks like that s all you have. ... Reportmmissive May 1 4:31pm Permalink What a fabulous temper tantrum. I make six figures in a cushy job in the USA - and I cannot fathom the condition of the psyche necessary to write this, unles s it s just a work of fiction -- which seems likely. Non-unionized 3rd grade teachers typically make under $45,000/year. Let s not ev en talk about how little landscaping pays. No one will give tenure without years of prior experience. Nobody I know gets 4 months off per year; try 2 weeks, if you re lucky. Teachers do get more, but continuing education and conferences ten ds to eat into it. The waitresses I know say the rich and powerful wannabes are the bozos who always forget to tip, so I don t believe they re relying on the largesse of wall street hustlers for income. But don t let me stop you from going Galt. It sounds like it ll be a boon for th e garden hose industry. ReportThe Bullet May 1 4:07pm Permalink Coffin Dodger, hilarious article. So wonderfully deluded. Yeah some banks get so me stress and general market valuations come down due to removal of speculative premium and margin pressure as the world adjusts to a new capital markets model. That has to happen some day anyway. The apocalypse is what waits if we keep on pretending that these banks add value for us All the Wall Streeters that agree with this sort of donkey are just work addled, deeply insecure muppets who think that the world ends beyond the office door. R emember, the world sort of works despite you guys raking off too much from the t op from your generally unproductive exercise. Ultimately, your cream can be trac ed back to capital providers getting too little for the capital they risk...and this goes back through all the noise and complexity to somewhere someone or firm creating goods of value to create the extra bit of value some of which ends up being toyed with in banks. Remember, all trading or market making profits are ou t of productive societies pocket...of course with a nice bit oomph with leverage thrown in. This stuff is no different from the banking crises of old such as 19 07 or many in C19th. There is always a banking ponzi created as a result of boom in unregulated capital markets (which is by and large what we have). The world gets over these reasonably quickly High end finance is such a small part of the economy. Yeah it may have helped fu nnel some foreign capital into the US....but that goes one day anyway for reason s that are far bigger than all the Wall St chimps punting The only thing to fear is fear itself! Get on with reforming the system. No real need to hang people along the way (but the world probably wants a few tokens... so kind of GS to volunteer). It probably means we will get round to valuing amer ica s great businesses a whole lot more and creating more of them I am tired of the hubris of these whinging Wall Streeters. Most on Wall St (City etc) will just adapt and get on with things and make a really good living given their talents...but this hysterical minority are so maladjusted they will obvio usly struggle...you are right to fear that we don t love or value you. Ahhhh, di dums...I will try my best to empathise with you all when once you are of the ang er phase and really showing how sorry you are for yourselves and how much you ha te your self xxx Reportm43cap May 1 3:35pm Permalink Excellet! Needed to be written. ReportVibha Pingle May 1 1:58pm Permalink

We ve got monsters among us. Can we send them to Afghanistan? Or maybe that is t oo dangerous. ReportSkwosh May 1 12:41pm Permalink @coffin dodger Great piece. Things are starting to get interesting. I left off the last paragra ph off my re-write last night- dooh: "We aren t dinosaurs. We are smarter er vs. velociraptor- a lot of people even if Obama and his administration eets money, will that be enough for the end of all of us." Reportcoffin dodger May 1 12:16pm even closer to the truth still -

http://nypress.com...-fraudonomics.html ReportWillem de Leeuw May 1 9:51am Permalink We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. Work smarter, not harder. From one of the same people who thought that lending to NINJAs and negative amor tisation mortgages are good ideas? ReportRich May 1 9:45am Permalink See, that s a great image of a Wall Streeter. Convinced the rest of the universe are just lolling around hoping the Street will keep the economy alive. As if th eir powers for profit are entirely inherent and nothing to do with their lucky p roximity to the savings of all other people on earth. At least from now on, more ex-bankers will be doing something productive with al l that energy. Like teaching kids baseball 16 hours a day, or something. Reportwilliambanzai7 May 1 8:35am Permalink AN EMAIL FROM WALL STREET, APRIL 30, 2010 (WilliamBanzai7) "We are Wall Street. It s our job to steal and swindle other people s money. Whe ther it s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of imported synth etic CDO toilet tissue, it doesn t matter. We would trade baseball cards for our own mothers-in-law if it were profitable, but our trophy silicone implantee spo uses won t allow it. We didn t hear all you stupid dumbass American commoners complaining when the ma rket was roaring to 14,000 and everyone s 401k doubled every 3 years providing a mple target opportunities for bloated Wall Street asset management fees. Just li ke gambling, its not a problem for us because its "heads we win, tails you lose. " I ve never heard of anyone going to jail because they scammed Uncle Sam out of Billions of Dollars. [WB7: But you soon will] Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat on our algo churning Fed financed prop trading books, the government and the average Jo es are still looking for accountability. God knows why there should be for anyth ing we on Wall Street have done. 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? You re go ing to have to finance our food stamps and unemployment benefits in perpetuity b ecause we don t know how to do anything but play computer assisted video games o

and less vicious than that (investment bank would pay to watch that). The question is, cut our free and easy access to Joe Mainstr him to survive... because it will probably be Permalink

n trading screens and write "Fab"ulous power point swindles targeting strudel br ained German bankers. Guess what else: We re going to take your burger flipping and gas pumping jobs. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later because we can t stand being with our own spouses. We re used to not getting up to pee because we learned how to drin k our own at Ivy League frathouse parties. We don t take an hour or more for a l unch break (at least that s what the Wall Street madam is paid to say). We don t demand a union because we own Congress and don t need one. We don t retire at 5 0 with a pension; we absaquatulate with our miniature robber barron stashes at t he age of 40. We eat what we kill and we kill everything we meet and when the on ly thing left to eat is AIG s putrid Maiden Lane portfolio, we ll eat that too. For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too bus y working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd g raders and doing landscaping? [WB7 (a) please teach your own Third Grade brats, (b) do they teach landscaping 101 at Sing Sing?] We re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whin e just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America . [WB7: Sounds like this dude definitely got rear ended by someone in third grade] Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I ll be hitting grounde rs to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much. [WB7: With a corked bat we re sure] 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 buyi ng 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 o wn 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. [WB7: Please send this message to Michael Bloomberg ASAP] The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administrat ion and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off t he 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 bo ttom. [WB7: Got news for you **** head, the people in the street are going to rip your pencil necked geek head off and after ******** down your neck, they ll be order ing Banksta Miniature Rocky Mountain Oysters for lunch. 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 supplywill he? and will they?" [WB7: See you in the next world baby...and don t be late!] Reportdhm May 1 6:27am Permalink We eat what we kill,... Jeez,, I didn t realize trading desks were soooo dangerous. They must use a lot off fly spray.

Reportmojomogoz May 1 3:19am Permalink As an ex secondary school teacher (in ordinary school - some good uns, some bad) i would like to point out that i worked long hours and it could be quite stress ful and tricky with some very hard situations to negotiate . As it turns out whe n i turned to a job in the city it was brilliant education for being able to out bull and bluff slow witted city types lacking balls and the ability to go comma ndo in tricky non-trained situations. The City /Wall St are great places with some true greats....but all the bleating comes from hollow egos ReportSkwosh May 1 1:21am Permalink [This is maybe a bit British in places- but I can t help it- dam it] We are Wall Street. Its our job to skim money off the rest of you. Whether youre a doctor, docker, taxi-driver, squaddie, chiropodists, plumber, jockey, shelf-sta cker, widow or orphan, it doesnt matter to us. Wed happily rip off the mafia if it wasnt physically dangerous. I didnt hear America complaining before wed f***ed eve rything up so badly you all finally managed to work out what it is we actually d o. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you run out of money and have to g o crying to your Uncle Ben to make it all better. Ive never heard of anyone havin g to go to Gamblers Anonymous whos been bailed out over and over again every time they went bust. Well now the market crapped out, even though it has come back somewhat because t he government printed sh*t loads of money and rigged the system so even a retard ed spaniel with poor keyboard skills could make money, but the government and th e average Joes *still* havent forgotten who was responsible. God knows, sometimes a particular small group of people really *are* the cause for a bad thing happe ning, and, well, here we are. Go ahead and continue to take us down, but youre only going to make yourselves fe el better. Whats going to happen when we cant find jobs on the Street anymore? Gue ss what: Were going to discover, just like everyone else, that people tend to gra vitate towards jobs they have an aptitude for, and in our case theres probably go ing to be less demand for abstruse parasitic deal making and tricking people out of their money by lying to them. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. Wer e used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We dont take an hour or more for a lunch break. We dont demand a union. We dont retire at 50 with a pensio n. You too would do all of these things if you could make as much money as we do simply by being comfortable with morally bankruptcy. We eat what we kill- well, actually, we dont really *kill* anything as such, but, you know, we like to thin k of ourselves as pure savage warrior types (like the kind they have in films an d TV shows) though I guess if we were really like that wed all be in the army or something, which were not because that also can actually be physically dangerous. When the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates wed try to eat that too , though if you then threatened us with physical violence, as you probably would , wed most likely back away and try to find a bin somewhere outside a restaurant or something. For years teachers and other unionized labour have had us fooled, in a rather si milar way to the way we ve had you fooled. We were too busy thinking about money to notice. Do you really think that we arent capable of doing comparatively medi um skilled jobs just like the rest of you ordinary average Joes, rather than hig hly skilled high status and genuinely valued productive jobs that command fairly high salaries and take years of training and experience that will be totally in accessible to us because we have squandered what ever talent and intellectual ca pacity we may have had on a career in useless financial w*nk? Were going to compe te for your crushingly normal modestly paid jobs and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for doing something like teaching maths to a bunch of ki ds all day (because, frankly, teaching maths in the rather un-cut-throat educati

onal sector is the first thing that comes into our minds when we try to think ab out what sort of jobs we might actually be able to survive at in the real world that dont involve having to say have a nice day all the time). Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half if you happen to work in a profession that a llow us to continue to keep our pathetically underdeveloped egos inflated by cre ating situations in which we can win all the time, such as... school sports coachi ng. So now were going to be making ordinary money, Joe Mainstreet is going to have hi s revenge, right? Right! Guess what: were not going to be able to afford that new 80k car, we arent going to be able to afford our outrageously expensive business dinners anymore. No more using your money to pay you to keep the oh-so-crucialto-the-economy luxury goods and entertainment sector afloat. Were going to landsc ape our own back yards (assuming theyre big enough to require landscaping) and wer e going to wash our car (maybe cars is stretching it a bit) with a garden hose i n our driveways. Your money was our money. We spent it. When your money dries up , we wont be able to afford expensive stuff any more. The difference is, you worked productively for it, we didnt. The Obama administra tion and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but its really going to hurt like hell for us when our fa t a**es land up directly in the middle of the impoverished middle class of Ameri ca and we find ourselves and our standard of living sinking to the bottom along with everyone else. Reportpegnu May 1 1:11am Permalink hahahhahah utterly pathetic drivel from a class of people who know the party is over but ca n t quite admit it yet. Reportkdmpf May 1 12:21am Permalink Well, how does $10/hour, no benefits, no regular hours grab you, A********? Reportnedbest1657 April 30 11:46pm Permalink "were going to stop buying the new 80k car, we arent going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. " So when they buy a luxury car, or tip for a meal, they are giving the workers th at built the car, or served the meal (likely on an expense account), a free ride on their backs. No doubt the traders that are passing this around nod their hea ds sagely at the wisdom contained within. To the rest of us it is just another e xample of how clueless the masters of the universe really are. I m certain this put the fear of god into every illegal alien working under the table doing landscaping for below minimum wage. People who have never done manua l labor in their lives, are used to earning 6 figures, and are as smart as dinos aurs will soon be displacing them. Reportbearish April 30 11:12pm Permalink except there won t be a middle class in America ; there will be the gvernment, b ig corporations, poor people who receive welfare and poor people who pay tax ReportR Karma April 30 10:28pm Permalink I could never feel threatened by anyone who says pee Reportcal.seff April 30 10:26pm Permalink Yeah you re so freakin better than everyone else because you able to make money from all the money the taxpayers lent you at zero present interest. I mean no-on e could possibly do that that. You wouldn t last 5 seconds in the real world doi ng real work. Get over you self. Reportsrdagostino April 30 9:34pm Permalink There is a certain amount of truth to this! Way too many average Americans playe d the housing market and their 401(k) plans as though they were playing the slot s in Vegas. Heck, way too many charitable foundations invested their money in Wa ll Street!

Bottom line: Nearly all of us in America drank at least some of the Kool-Aid! ReportConfused gardener April 30 9:33pm Permalink educationally substandard ReportConfused gardener April 30 9:32pm Permalink Surely me and this guy are the same? We both provide a service and take a slice of GDP created by other more productive members of society. Give me a call if yo u want advice on how to deal with the rich mexicans you end working for and thei r terrible carping that you are no good lay around ****** thief. PS the education system has moved beyond humiliation and fear as motivation to l earning Reporthendrik.rood April 30 9:24pm Permalink George Parr: In any case, we keep saying: "if you tax us we go abroad." And that is not an idle threat. We can go and wreck somebody else s financial sy stem. (Bird and Fortune - Financial Adviser, October 2007) Reportbaslip April 30 8:29pm Permalink move over middle-class dirt, there are some big egos squeezing you out. but seriously, he s probably really fun to hang out and drink with, but he would probably be a pain as a neighbor ReportSmiley Stan April 30 8:11pm Permalink loved the first half of the letter, not too sure about the second half though... ReportBootvis April 30 8:10pm Permalink Maddox, is that you? Reportshadow April 30 8:09pm Permalink We re so smart that we were completely bust in 2008 and had to be bailed out by honest hardworking taxpayers. Then with TARP,ZIRP,QE etc etc giving us brain dead but magnificently greedy Str eet traders another free ride,we;ve cleaned up again beyond our wildest dreams.I f it all ended tomorrow we d never have to work again,unlike the rest of you sch mucks! Hope you miss us when we re gone! ReportJoe Wall Street April 30 7:33pm Permalink we could just brown bag lunch for a week and not go out to dinner.. Reportguesswork April 30 7:33pm Permalink Sounds like that psycho.... John Galt ? Whoever it is, he should be locked up. . .. Reportxxxstowe April 30 7:31pm Permalink loved it