sometimes the new york times just makes me laugh/cringe with inane sections like this (no, not just sunday styles). because, y'know, we all were looking for advice on how to bequeath our vast sums of wealth so that our heirs don't turn out like brandon davis or hey! maybe i should consider moving my seven figure investment account into a hedge fund! oh gosh, there is always the question of whether my second home should provide respite or additional income. mo' money mo' problems, indeed.anyway, this headline caught my eye. holy shit, dudes! i live in new york! my job is tied to wall street! the sky is falling! who knew "each Wall Street job supports three workers in other sectors?" dig a little deeper, however, and you'll find where the times's concerns really lie:
Last month, Shai Shustik, a broker with Manhattan Residential, was helping a 27-year-old client find a $700,000 one-bedroom apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. But then the client suddenly put her search on hold. Her father, a banker, said he had lost too much money in the stock market to buy such an apartment for her.
Until two weeks ago, Mr. Shustik was also working with a Credit Suisse banker who wanted to spend up to $1.6 million for a one-bedroom apartment in the West Village or TriBeCa neighborhoods of Manhattan. The banker abruptly stopped his apartment search because he was too concerned about the stock market and his future bonus potential.
what?! fuck you, new york times. seriously.anyway, here is my promised rant on bear stearns, which seems more legitimate now that jp morgan has decided to up its bid to $10/share. at least at $2/share the fed could claim with a somewhat straight face that this was not a taxpayer-financed bailout of one of the most unsympathetic firms on wall street. after all, it wasn't so long ago that bear stearns refused to bail out long term capital management. so now the fed is rescuing one of the instigators of the mortgage backed security meltdown with my, no, our tax dollars. these renegades who decided that they were above regulations are now begging the government for a handout and so here we are. okay, i get it, what was the fed supposed to do, merely watch while the banking system fell one by one? i'm not naive: of course the big players have a direct line to the government while the vast majority of law-abiding taxpayers don't. i get it. it's just completely demoralizing to see it so vividly in play.
anyway, back to our regular programming...
1 comment:
A lot of blogs have been seething at the recent AP article about middle-age people moving back with their parents.
Meanwhile, where is the outrage over the father who had planned to buy his princess the Manhattan apartment? After all, if it wasn't for schadenfreude winning out, he'd have spent more money on his grown child than practically any parent who welcomes theirs back in the nest.
I won't pretend to be accurate, but it seems most Manhattanites in their 20s and 30s have their housing bankrolled by their parents - and no one questions their "independence" or value as people. But the young adults who live with parents - even if they're employed, even if they're saving money for a house - are the ones regarded as "coddled."
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