[ReverseEngineer]

Good riddance to these pukes, these turds got out of college and made more money than doctors and were idolized as gods in this country, those days are over if things get bad enough they will be lucky to keep their heads attached to their bodies, think french revolution.

It's Politically Incorrect here to advocate a return to the legal redress of the Guillotine, as some people find the idea of REAL beheadings to be objectionable.

In any event, in considering the High Crimes and Misdemeanors, clearly some folks are worse than others, and there are many other things to consider than JUST whether a person made a 7 figure salary or not in passing Judgement. Its how you lived and what kind of values you had along the way. Clearly, someone who used the money to stuff coke up the noses of high priced whores deserves somewhat less consideration than someone who used said money to support his relatives back in India.

In the end, Justice will be served here, one way or the other.

Reverse Engineer

[ReverseEngineer]

The end cannot come soon enough.

this has got to be the greatest single line i've yet read here as a response to something. amen man. amen.

Aren't you sick of this hyperbole? Yes, the end of our current economic paradigm. But the end of civilisation? Millions dead? Yeah, bring it on. Get a grip, chaps.

several points:

one, you need to get a sense of humor.

two, to be honest, i vacillate. some days i actually do wish the whole stupid thing would come crashing down, especially when the thought is contrasted against something as pathetic as it was in this thread. other days (most days), no, since i find the thought of billions suffering rather horrible.

three, you need to get a sense of humor. seriously.

I will tell you from personal experience, this board hit Peak Humour in the Jurassic Period. Some folks take every last thing you write seriously. Watch those metaphors! Keep a lid on those jokes! Just the facts, m'am. Write your posts like Sgt Joe Friday so nobody can misconstrue your meaning.

Reverse Engineer

[xerces]

Posts in this thread have a deep undercurrent of jealousy, I find it rather ridiculous.

Investment Bankers are not billionaires nor are they masters of the universe. Most of them make less than 200K a year and the annual attrition rate is 30%(more like 60% this year in NYC). The average work week for an Ibanker is around 100hrs. So they are only paid between 20-40 dollars an hour. These are normal people who just happen to make a little bit more money than the average Joe.

Moreover, New York has a lot of attractive, materialistic women, which city doesn't? Why is everyone busting on a bunch of boys blowing their hard earned cash on fancy tail?

I did a short stint at Morgan Stanley's NYC office during my younger days, and (of course) dated a model or two. So I can empathize with their plight, if only a little.

[lawnchair]

Investment Bankers are not billionaires nor are they masters of the universe.

They were playing 'master of the universe', and that's why we're pissed.

These arsewipes decided to feed the Madoffs, Enrons, mortgage-securities, derivatives, CDSs, etc.

Real companies, with real books, weren't making more than 5%/year. That's *good* in the real world in the best of years. Try and do better than that with honest books!

But, these "barely-six-figure" quant fuckers said "look, I can get 9% with Madoff or this MBS (that we paid to get a AAA rating for)... now *dance* for me". So the companies outsource, do dumb M&A, grow unsustainably, hire rockstar CEOs, eat their seed capital, cook their books, or whatever it takes to 'meet the street'. Stupid corporate tricks that helped ruin the nation.

[vision-master]

This appears to me to be too well written to be factual, rather I think its a funny fiction with a lot of truth behind it.

Having hung around the New York Club Scene some in my college years, I remember well the FIT girls hanging in the clubs looking for well to do Stock Brokers who would stuff enough Coke up their noses for them to spread their legs in a stupor. The Signature of success back there in the 80s was to run a party in your Penthouse with lines of Coke a mile long on a mirrored Table, populating the party with with the latest Models from the Ford Agency, a few of the local NBA players and MLB players and if you were really well connected maybe a bona fide Hollywood Stud or Starlet. I got into said parties occassionally because one of my best friends came from a family of immense wealth, one of the oldest Fortunes in America.

Many of the guys at those parties were young recent graduates of Columbia Business School recently hired by Lehman or Goldman to almost immediate 6 figure salaries on graduation. My roommate from undergrad actually took one of those jobs later on. If you could catch one of these models in a real stupor and feed her a few good lies about who you were, you might get her for the night, but unless you actually had money to feed her nose and take her to the best clubs in a Limo, you couldn't actually DATE them.

Any of those guys recently made Jobless by the foldin of Lehman ALSO almost certainly has been cut off from dipping his wick into the fashion models, just as Dick Fuld and John Thain were not welcome at the Davos conferance this year. Lose the money, you lose all the Perks that go with that. You wonder why there are suicides here?

For the equally shallow fashion models, the pickings are getting increasingly thin of Pigmen who will stuff their noses full of coke and wine and dine them at Lutece. As Magazines fold, fewer will be employed making $5000 an hour to get their pictures taken fuly clothed. The whoring will become somewhat more explicit, and it will come cheaper also.

Reverse Engineer

That was good.

[basil_hayden]

Posts in this thread have a deep undercurrent of jealousy, I find it rather ridiculous.

It's not jealousy.

It's disdain, and/or disgust.

You bastiges don't WORK for a living, you gamble with other people's money. You produce nothing of value. Whether things go right or wrong, apparently you get a bonus either way. Investment bankers operate, as a group, outside of reality.

The cool part is the women seeking investment bankers have the same short-term goals; it must suck when the tables are turned. LOL

[Jotapay]

You bastiges don't WORK for a living, you gamble with other people's money. You produce nothing of value.

LOL

Exactly. Bankers have no notion of actual work. I wouldn't piss on a banker if he/she was on fire.

[xerces]

Posts in this thread have a deep undercurrent of jealousy, I find it rather ridiculous.

It's not jealousy.

It's disdain, and/or disgust.

You bastiges don't WORK for a living, you gamble with other people's money. You produce nothing of value. Whether things go right or wrong, apparently you get a bonus either way. Investment bankers operate, as a group, outside of reality.

The cool part is the women seeking investment bankers have the same short-term goals; it must suck when the tables are turned. LOL

From your comments, one can tell that you know little to nothing about that industry. I have never worked as an IBanker, I was in Prime Brokerage, but I have seen just how hard these guys work. My first job was a trench digger, so I might know a little bit about putting in a solid day's effort.

[Jotapay]

From your comments, one can tell that you know little to nothing about that industry. I have never worked as an IBanker, I was in Prime Brokerage, but I have seen just how hard these guys work. My first job was a trench digger, so I might know a little bit about putting in a solid day's effort.

I know. I managed and did the programming for most of the IT operations for one of the country's largest broker/dealers. I studied much of the Series 7 material, so I know how the investment industry works quite a bit. I was on a first name basis with many people at Fidelity and Pershing (we cleared at both firms).

The thing that got me is how stupid most of the managers in financial services were. Even though their business was basically numerical, they could not comprehend a table of numbers. They had to get their reports with a graph.

Their business was based not on financial analysis, but relationships. I have to repeat that because it's so important how flawed the system was. They did business deals because "so-and-so is a really good guy". They did not make decisions based on financial analysis. They did business with their friends and people who fit their image of what a good banker looked like, not that he was actually good at finance. There were only five or so people at our company who were worth a damn: the CEO (great guy but of course, he was replaced), the COO, a compliance manager and our chief council.

We actually had subsidiary presidents and VPs doing unethical things like steering clients to insurance and MF companies with whom they had higher commission rates, well after the CEO (and SEC/NASD) told them to cut it out. There was evidence of mutual fund churning (quick intra-day buy/sells of mutual funds on house accounts for small profits times 50,000 per day) in the database.

This is why I would not piss on a banker if they were ablaze. They are unethical fvcktard idiots for the most part who definitely don't deserve their disproportionately large percentage of the overall wealth.

[jdmartin]

[
The thing that got me is how stupid most of the managers in financial services were. Even though their business was basically numerical, they could not comprehend a table of numbers

There were only five or so people at our company who were worth a damn: 1.the CEO (great guy but of course, he was replaced), 2.the COO, 3.a compliance manager and 4.our chief council.

5.????

I agree with your post, Jotapay, just having a little fun at your expense

PS: Didn't this thread used to have a different title?

[Jotapay]

5.????

I agree with your post, Jotapay, just having a little fun at your expense

PS: Didn't this thread used to have a different title?

Hah! You're right. There were a handful of people, but I guess that handful didn't actually make it to five.

I changed the title, I didn't think 'whores' was completely appropriate although it might be what I would have said in less discreet company.

[basil_hayden]

Posts in this thread have a deep undercurrent of jealousy, I find it rather ridiculous.

It's not jealousy.

It's disdain, and/or disgust.

You bastiges don't WORK for a living, you gamble with other people's money. You produce nothing of value. Whether things go right or wrong, apparently you get a bonus either way. Investment bankers operate, as a group, outside of reality.

The cool part is the women seeking investment bankers have the same short-term goals; it must suck when the tables are turned. LOL

From your comments, one can tell that you know little to nothing about that industry. I have never worked as an IBanker, I was in Prime Brokerage, but I have seen just how hard these guys work. My first job was a trench digger, so I might know a little bit about putting in a solid day's effort.

Xerces-


Do you understand the difference between jealousy and disgust? One implies I want to be them (which couldn't be further from the truth) and the other implies I'd never want to be them (Bingo!).

As I respect your efforts in mini urban gardening and am a former trench digger myself, I'd like a couple questions answered instead of me just going off with both barrels, which is likely to occur eventuallly anyway, hehe.

1. Can you tell me how investment banking or brokering is more laborious than trench digging?

2. What was used in the process of investment banking or brokering and what did it produce of value and why can't these folks be relaced with a computer program like the ATM has done to the bank teller?

As Jotopay implied, it's not what you know but who you know; and how far you're willing to push it in the name of self. I may not be as close to it as Xerces, but I've been exposed repeatedly against my will.

[dbruning]

"5.???? "

It should go without saying that he is the 5th!!!

[xerces]

Posts in this thread have a deep undercurrent of jealousy, I find it rather ridiculous.

It's not jealousy.

It's disdain, and/or disgust.

You bastiges don't WORK for a living, you gamble with other people's money. You produce nothing of value. Whether things go right or wrong, apparently you get a bonus either way. Investment bankers operate, as a group, outside of reality.

The cool part is the women seeking investment bankers have the same short-term goals; it must suck when the tables are turned. LOL

From your comments, one can tell that you know little to nothing about that industry. I have never worked as an IBanker, I was in Prime Brokerage, but I have seen just how hard these guys work. My first job was a trench digger, so I might know a little bit about putting in a solid day's effort.

Xerces-


Do you understand the difference between jealousy and disgust? One implies I want to be them (which couldn't be further from the truth) and the other implies I'd never want to be them (Bingo!).

As I respect your efforts in mini urban gardening and am a former trench digger myself, I'd like a couple questions answered instead of me just going off with both barrels, which is likely to occur eventuallly anyway, hehe.

1. Can you tell me how investment banking or brokering is more laborious than trench digging?

2. What was used in the process of investment banking or brokering and what did it produce of value and why can't these folks be relaced with a computer program like the ATM has done to the bank teller?

As Jotopay implied, it's not what you know but who you know; and how far you're willing to push it in the name of self. I may not be as close to it as Xerces, but I've been exposed repeatedly against my will.

1. Trench digging is hard work, but the task itself is fairly straightforward. It's easy to get the job done right, the company is generally amicable, and it's only 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.. I was paid $10 dollars an hour to do that.

Financial Services does not require as much physical labor, but each problem is much harder to solve. How do you know whether this company in a sector is better than another one? What types of quantitative analysis do you run? What data do you run against? What kind of a model are you running? Can you trust the data or do you think the company is lying to you?

This job is 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week. Now since most Investment banks have a 20% minimum attrition policy(1 out of 5 analysts/associates is let go every year, regardless of how well the Bank does), the competition is fiercely competitive. So the work environment is horrible, all of your peers are trying to edge you out of the game by all means possible. The VPs and Executive Directors are cruel and intolerant of mistakes. You suffer through verbal and emotional abuse on a daily basis. All of this for $15 an hour.

For me, it got to the point where I was having nightmares EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Financial Services is MUCH harder than digging trenches. After a normal day of trench-digging, I had a sore back. After a normal day at Morgan Stanley, I had a sore back, carpal tunnel, bloodshot eyes, strained nerves, canker sores, upset stomach, and light emotional trauma.

So I definitely feel these IBank analysts and associates (~90% of all Ibankers) deserve at least a small degree of our compassion. And I perfectly understand why they blow their relatively small salaries on Trophy Girlfriends.


2.
In my opinion, the Financial services sector, if run correctly, should serve as an efficient means of allocating resources to economic sectors that most needs resources. The market is not in a state of perfect competition, and small startups with important innovations could be snuffed out my larger corporations fearing competition. That's where IBanking, if implemented CORRECTLY, can add great value. The trouble is that the Financial Sector is not running properly, much like our healthcare, automotive, and education sectors.

Would it be possible someday for algorithms to do this kind of analysis? Sure, some of it are done by algorithms today. Just like how cars and houses nowadays are mostly pre-fabricated/pre-assembled by robots.

[ReverseEngineer]

So I definitely feel these IBank analysts and associates (~90% of all Ibankers) deserve at least a small degree of our compassion. And I perfectly understand why they blow their relatively small salaries on Trophy Girlfriends.

Of course there are many Wannabee Pigmen in the "Trenches", coming out of Bizness Skule with MBAs working and suffering the endless dressing down for a loss they took on a trade or a client lost as they put in their 100 hour work weeks with some Medium Level Pigman above them who made it thru that period cracking the Whip all the time. I was there also for a time, working for the Money Manager's office at Merrill right out of High School, then briefly for Drexel as a Risk Analyst after College. I was somewhat less subject to the kind of pressure traders had because I was just a human computer really, somebody who could take numbers and digest them for others to make decisions on. While these jobs paid pretty well, it still was pretty distasteful work overall. I was working for people I considered idiots, and the system itself made no sense really. I had to quit doing that, I just hated it.

Is this "hard work"? Of course in a sense it is, because its very stressful for the climbers. It also however is not really productive work, and mostly you just serve as a tool by which those at the top of the chain reap their profits. You might hang on trying to climb into one of those postions of REAL power, but frankly they are mostly reserved for folks with the right connections who move quickly out of the trenches into positions of power. As a worker in this industry, if you do it all you are doing is perpetuating a bad system, and I could not do that even for the money involved. Besides, I just hated wearing a suit and tie. Made me feel like a Penguin. LOL.

Compared to the labor involved in working in a Coal Mine however, along with all the stresses of trying to feed your family on meager wages, you cannot really compare the difficulty of one to another. Apples and Oranges. By no means however does anyone who works in this industry, despite the fact they might have survived their time in the trenches deserve Paydays in the Millions, while equally hard working Coal Miners and Teachers and all the rest of people are paid in the Thousands. Its a very poor distribution of wealth with respect to work and productivity overall. I doesn't really have any intrinsic value to society, rather it is a leech upon society, sucking wealth out as an intermediary in the trading system. As long as there was plenty of Blood out there to leech out (resources), the bigger leeches got the bigger portions of the wealth. Now that there is not so much Blood, the biggest leeches are dying of starvation first.

The other dynamic you have to consider is how this culture of Greed affects the people who work in that industry, and the profligate spedning of the wealth that was accumulated through these means. To show your success, to benefit from it and revel in it, your goal was to have the biggest Penthouse, the most lines of Coke laid out on the mirror, the prettiest Models from Ford at your Parties. Real Players fly around in their own Jets, they don't ride coach with the Hoi Polloi, even First Class on a Commercial Airliner is beneath them. What do these folks really DO though? They mainly just hold positions of power which enable them to leech out the wealth of others systematically. It all comes from the earth in the end, and too many leeches sucking too much too fast depletes the host and so they ALL die in this system. Its fundamentally unsustainable, it HAD to fail, and so it is now. I knew it would, I just did not know when. Now I know.

For the people who bought into this system, even the apparatchiks who did so at the expense of their souls, being berated by their bosses and stressing out in 100 hour work weeks, they made a compact with the Devil, and they lost the bet. Do I feel the least bit sorry for any of them, the $100K a year trenchers just trying to make ends meet in NYC, where a one bedroom apt could cost you $2500 a month or more? No I do not. If you were so stupid as to buy this game, you now reap the results of that, its YOUR problem, not MY problem. Wannabee Pigmen are not a whole lot different than the Pigmen themselves, they serve also as the apparatchiks of Satan. They will Burn in Hell also.

Reverse Engineer

[nobodypanic]

Sorry, but these people who were earning 100k, maybe 200k are just workers like us. OK, they got lucky. But they're not pigmen.

the hell you say! just like whom??? try telling that to some guy flipping burgers or laying asphalt for a living.

after years of attempting to make everyone believe they were a 'cut above' most, all of a sudden people making 200k want to be thought of as nothing more than j6p? is that right?

[davep]

Sorry, but these people who were earning 100k, maybe 200k are just workers like us. OK, they got lucky. But they're not pigmen.

the hell you say! just like whom??? try telling that to some guy flipping burgers or laying asphalt for a living.

after years of attempting to make everyone believe they were a 'cut above' most, all of a sudden people making 200k want to be thought of as nothing more than j6p? is that right?

Did I say that? No. I used to work 12 hour nights breaking concrete with pneumatic drills. We would be stupid not to try to better ourselves.

I worked for Morgan Stanley in the nineties, with the Equity Research guys. They are a smart bunch, but after a while I left, and went back to my Family in France because Family counts for more than money.

Remember, it isn't people who happen to find a good way to make money who are at fault here, it's those who lobbied for deregulation and sat in the shadows, raking in the money.

I don't particularly like the braying rugby playing public schoolboys who tend to go into finance, but that's not a reason to demonise them. We need to be clear who orchestrated this, it was the bankers who lobbied government (and the government themselves for allowing themselves to be corrupted). The minions were merely wannabe yuppies.

[auscanman]

So I definitely feel these IBank analysts and associates (~90% of all Ibankers) deserve at least a small degree of our compassion. And I perfectly understand why they blow their relatively small salaries on Trophy Girlfriends.

Of course there are many Wannabee Pigmen in the "Trenches", coming out of Bizness Skule with MBAs working and suffering the endless dressing down for a loss they took on a trade or a client lost as they put in their 100 hour work weeks with some Medium Level Pigman above them who made it thru that period cracking the Whip all the time. I was there also for a time, working for the Money Manager's office at Merrill right out of High School, then briefly for Drexel as a Risk Analyst after College. I was somewhat less subject to the kind of pressure traders had because I was just a human computer really, somebody who could take numbers and digest them for others to make decisions on. While these jobs paid pretty well, it still was pretty distasteful work overall. I was working for people I considered idiots, and the system itself made no sense really. I had to quit doing that, I just hated it.

Is this "hard work"? Of course in a sense it is, because its very stressful for the climbers. It also however is not really productive work, and mostly you just serve as a tool by which those at the top of the chain reap their profits. You might hang on trying to climb into one of those postions of REAL power, but frankly they are mostly reserved for folks with the right connections who move quickly out of the trenches into positions of power. As a worker in this industry, if you do it all you are doing is perpetuating a bad system, and I could not do that even for the money involved. Besides, I just hated wearing a suit and tie. Made me feel like a Penguin. LOL.

Compared to the labor involved in working in a Coal Mine however, along with all the stresses of trying to feed your family on meager wages, you cannot really compare the difficulty of one to another. Apples and Oranges. By no means however does anyone who works in this industry, despite the fact they might have survived their time in the trenches deserve Paydays in the Millions, while equally hard working Coal Miners and Teachers and all the rest of people are paid in the Thousands. Its a very poor distribution of wealth with respect to work and productivity overall. I doesn't really have any intrinsic value to society, rather it is a leech upon society, sucking wealth out as an intermediary in the trading system. As long as there was plenty of Blood out there to leech out (resources), the bigger leeches got the bigger portions of the wealth. Now that there is not so much Blood, the biggest leeches are dying of starvation first.

The other dynamic you have to consider is how this culture of Greed affects the people who work in that industry, and the profligate spedning of the wealth that was accumulated through these means. To show your success, to benefit from it and revel in it, your goal was to have the biggest Penthouse, the most lines of Coke laid out on the mirror, the prettiest Models from Ford at your Parties. Real Players fly around in their own Jets, they don't ride coach with the Hoi Polloi, even First Class on a Commercial Airliner is beneath them. What do these folks really DO though? They mainly just hold positions of power which enable them to leech out the wealth of others systematically. It all comes from the earth in the end, and too many leeches sucking too much too fast depletes the host and so they ALL die in this system. Its fundamentally unsustainable, it HAD to fail, and so it is now. I knew it would, I just did not know when. Now I know.

For the people who bought into this system, even the apparatchiks who did so at the expense of their souls, being berated by their bosses and stressing out in 100 hour work weeks, they made a compact with the Devil, and they lost the bet. Do I feel the least bit sorry for any of them, the $100K a year trenchers just trying to make ends meet in NYC, where a one bedroom apt could cost you $2500 a month or more? No I do not. If you were so stupid as to buy this game, you now reap the results of that, its YOUR problem, not MY problem. Wannabee Pigmen are not a whole lot different than the Pigmen themselves, they serve also as the apparatchiks of Satan. They will Burn in Hell also.

Reverse Engineer

I pretty much agree with all you've said.

I was lucky enough to grow up living in various places around the world and went to international schools wherever I lived. Of the friends I had from the schools growing up, just about everyone is in New York or London. Evidently these two cities are the meccas for the twentysomething globalists. Quite a few are in IBanking. I've asked them what it is about IBanking that justifies the high salaries. I have yet to receive any kind of comprehensible answer, let alone a good one.

Based on my observations of others around my age, I think they are for the most part completely lost and misguided. The almighty dollar is all that matters to most of them, rather than actual quality of life, and few seem to even have the ability to assess their quality of life. This is a big part of the reason why NY and London, and the accompanying high salaries are such major draws for them. Nevermind the fact that most of those salaries will be eaten up meeting their essential needs.

This leads to an interesting point on human nature. We are, inherently, competitive critters. That competitiveness has become all the more important to get ahead recently, and has been glorified by media and every facet of western society. Taking the inability of twentysomethings to factor in quality of life, our inherent competitiveness, and western society's values into account, my belief is that most twentysomethings (and almost all my former classmates) would rather be competing against one another in a rat race than enjoying a truly high quality of life elsewhere devoid of that same type of competition. The desire to be doing a job that adds true value to the world is virtually non-existent amongst my age group, so not even worth talking about! I fear that as my age group become the dominant force, the world (or what's left of it) will become a MUCH uglier place.

[davep]

So I definitely feel these IBank analysts and associates (~90% of all Ibankers) deserve at least a small degree of our compassion. And I perfectly understand why they blow their relatively small salaries on Trophy Girlfriends.

Of course there are many Wannabee Pigmen in the "Trenches", coming out of Bizness Skule with MBAs working and suffering the endless dressing down for a loss they took on a trade or a client lost as they put in their 100 hour work weeks with some Medium Level Pigman above them who made it thru that period cracking the Whip all the time. I was there also for a time, working for the Money Manager's office at Merrill right out of High School, then briefly for Drexel as a Risk Analyst after College. I was somewhat less subject to the kind of pressure traders had because I was just a human computer really, somebody who could take numbers and digest them for others to make decisions on. While these jobs paid pretty well, it still was pretty distasteful work overall. I was working for people I considered idiots, and the system itself made no sense really. I had to quit doing that, I just hated it.

Is this "hard work"? Of course in a sense it is, because its very stressful for the climbers. It also however is not really productive work, and mostly you just serve as a tool by which those at the top of the chain reap their profits. You might hang on trying to climb into one of those postions of REAL power, but frankly they are mostly reserved for folks with the right connections who move quickly out of the trenches into positions of power. As a worker in this industry, if you do it all you are doing is perpetuating a bad system, and I could not do that even for the money involved. Besides, I just hated wearing a suit and tie. Made me feel like a Penguin. LOL.

Compared to the labor involved in working in a Coal Mine however, along with all the stresses of trying to feed your family on meager wages, you cannot really compare the difficulty of one to another. Apples and Oranges. By no means however does anyone who works in this industry, despite the fact they might have survived their time in the trenches deserve Paydays in the Millions, while equally hard working Coal Miners and Teachers and all the rest of people are paid in the Thousands. Its a very poor distribution of wealth with respect to work and productivity overall. I doesn't really have any intrinsic value to society, rather it is a leech upon society, sucking wealth out as an intermediary in the trading system. As long as there was plenty of Blood out there to leech out (resources), the bigger leeches got the bigger portions of the wealth. Now that there is not so much Blood, the biggest leeches are dying of starvation first.

The other dynamic you have to consider is how this culture of Greed affects the people who work in that industry, and the profligate spedning of the wealth that was accumulated through these means. To show your success, to benefit from it and revel in it, your goal was to have the biggest Penthouse, the most lines of Coke laid out on the mirror, the prettiest Models from Ford at your Parties. Real Players fly around in their own Jets, they don't ride coach with the Hoi Polloi, even First Class on a Commercial Airliner is beneath them. What do these folks really DO though? They mainly just hold positions of power which enable them to leech out the wealth of others systematically. It all comes from the earth in the end, and too many leeches sucking too much too fast depletes the host and so they ALL die in this system. Its fundamentally unsustainable, it HAD to fail, and so it is now. I knew it would, I just did not know when. Now I know.

For the people who bought into this system, even the apparatchiks who did so at the expense of their souls, being berated by their bosses and stressing out in 100 hour work weeks, they made a compact with the Devil, and they lost the bet. Do I feel the least bit sorry for any of them, the $100K a year trenchers just trying to make ends meet in NYC, where a one bedroom apt could cost you $2500 a month or more? No I do not. If you were so stupid as to buy this game, you now reap the results of that, its YOUR problem, not MY problem. Wannabee Pigmen are not a whole lot different than the Pigmen themselves, they serve also as the apparatchiks of Satan. They will Burn in Hell also.

Reverse Engineer

I pretty much agree with all you've said.

I was lucky enough to grow up living in various places around the world and went to international schools wherever I lived. Of the friends I had from the schools growing up, just about everyone is in New York or London. Evidently these two cities are the meccas for the twentysomething globalists. Quite a few are in IBanking. I've asked them what it is about IBanking that justifies the high salaries. I have yet to receive any kind of comprehensible answer, let alone a good one.

Based on my observations of others around my age, I think they are for the most part completely lost and misguided. The almighty dollar is all that matters to most of them, rather than actual quality of life, and few seem to even have the ability to assess their quality of life. This is a big part of the reason why NY and London, and the accompanying high salaries are such major draws for them. Nevermind the fact that most of those salaries will be eaten up meeting their essential needs.

This leads to an interesting point on human nature. We are, inherently, competitive critters. That competitiveness has become all the more important to get ahead recently, and has been glorified by media and every facet of western society. Taking the inability of twentysomethings to factor in quality of life, our inherent competitiveness, and western society's values into account, my belief is that most twentysomethings (and almost all my former classmates) would rather be competing against one another in a rat race than enjoying a truly high quality of life elsewhere devoid of that same type of competition. The desire to be doing a job that adds true value to the world is virtually non-existent amongst my age group, so not even worth talking about! I fear that as my age group become the dominant force, the world (or what's left of it) will become a MUCH uglier place.

Don't worry, they'll grow up, as every generation does.

This is why it is fundamentally important to reduce the powers of corporations. Individuals get sick of it and leave, but the monster finds new willing acolytes to replace them. Wisdom is replaced by greed. Corporations should be subservient to the rights of individuals. Human rights should never have been given to corporations.