REPORTER CRASHES SECRET WALL STREET SOCIETY
There’s a fascinating article in this week’s editions of New York Magazine by reporter Kevin Roose – who in January 2012 crashed a private banquet held by Kappa Beta Phi, a secret Wall Street fraternity.
Why did Roose wait two years to write about the event – held at New York City’s luxurious St. Regis hotel?
We’re not sure … but his story is causing quite a bit of embarrassment for the wealthy “one percenters” who comprise this elite fraternity of “too big to fail” beneficiaries.
“Enough wealth and power was concentrated in the St. Regis that night that if you had dropped a bomb on the roof, global finance as we know it might have ceased to exist,” Roose writes.
Well then … it’s a shame he brought a cell phone and not a fertilizer bomb.
Anyway … Roose’s account depicts the one percent in all its unfeeling political incorrectness – mocking gays, hippies, Southerners and Mormons.
Even Hillary Clinton …
They even make fun of us poor saps … the taxpayers who bailed them out.
Roose’s takeaway?
“The upper ranks of finance are composed of people who have completely divorced themselves from reality,” he wrote. “No self-aware and socially conscious Wall Street executive would have agreed to be part of a group whose tacit mission is to make light of the financial sector’s foibles. Not when those foibles had resulted in real harm to millions of people in the form of foreclosures, wrecked 401(k)s, and a devastating unemployment crisis.”
Exactly …
Yet these are the people taxpayers were forced to bail out … not those of us busting our asses every day to make ends meet. And these are the people benefiting from the ongoing money-printing at the U.S. Federal Reserve.
44 comments
Sounds like you’re describing a bunch of out-of-touch elitist liberals…who play yall for D@*n fools, while living it up (see Obama)…..
Yeah right. Keep drinking that Kool-ade the Repukans are serving. Boy, do they have the wool pulled over your eyes!
You do know the bail-out money went to Obama’s leftwing @$$-kissers, don’t you???
You mean Bush bailed out banks and gave it to Obama?
Last I heard that all happened during the Bush administration.
How can that be T?
Republicans can do no wrong. Who cares if Bush signed the bailout? Who cares if Bush put in the guy who is responsible for doing QE? Who cares if Bush did his own stimulus? Who cares if Romney had the exact same ass-kissers (plus a few extra in the financial industry) that Obama had?
All sins are absolved once you put an R at the end of your name, so says Pope Tango.
Bush SAVED THE FREE MARKET!
Dammit!
Under Bush, jobs were plentiful and private-sector opportunity was abundant, as salaries and production were at ALL TIME highs.
Under Obama, jobs are scarce, business investment is in hibernation and salaries are decreasing…BUT: Obama is pumping $85 billion a month of OUR money to prop up his rich investor buddies on Wall St…
You cannot dispute any of that…or if you do, you look like an idiot…
What a spew, vommit taste better
Thanks for stepping forward to represent the idiots. I expected you would.
See China for that one, stupid
send your money to China, Bush Boy!
But they will keep donating heavily to the Democrat party, all the while the Democrats whine and wail about the eeeeeeeevil Wall Streeters and Onepercenters and the Fed keeps buying $85billion a month in crap bonds to keep their nice bonuses coming in.
Ehh, they’ll donate to a number of Democrats, as they own a bunch. They certainly own Obama. However, they owned Bush, the guy who put up Bernanke in the first place, and one quick look at Romney’s donors says they likely owned him too. Of course, I’m sure they own just about anyone in either primary, and if they don’t they certainly do what they can to bury them.
They made fun of Clinton? Heh, they’ll probably have her bought too.
Of course, the notion that corporations are people and money is free speech, and letting an unlimited amount of money influence politics, is certainly not going to make this worse. Nope.
Our money and the money borrowed from China bailed these crooks out. Nothing or nobody is “to big to fail” bad management is bad management no matter who dose it. If the “stimulus” had been directed to the individual the whole economy would have benefitted not just the elite bankers who hoarded the money. A $10,000.00 check to every taxpayer would have used less than half of what was wasted on the stimulus and gone to putting a shot in the arm of the entire economy. As it was done the one percent got it all and kept it. This was done under a Republican Pres. with a Dem. controlled congress. They are ALL to blame.
Wrong. Trying to sneak in that partisan crap makes the whole of the comment worthless. This is bipartisan theft to the core. They don’t care about you. I blame both.
Frank, as a fellow ADHDer, TBG sympath…..
*sees something shiny outside–wanders off from computer*
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….but go back and read El Lobo Pachyderm’s last two sentences.
Looks like the text possibly changed, but I acquiesce senior TBG. “They are ALL to blame.” Apologies to RogueElephant.
I do not have ADHD. I have ‘Work my ass off averaging 55 hours a week to support the stupid MF who sits home eating McCheetoNickers and complains of a lack of more Oprah while sucking every TEET he or she can find” disease.
It’s highly contagious. Beware
Sounds like you get to live out “Atlas Shrugged”
I suppose the Jews were partially to blame for living in Germany in the first place.
I call BS on this. The bailout was all Bush and Paulson. They put the bailout package together, took it to Congress and said if you don’t pass this the economy will collapse in a matter of days. And guess what they were probably right, because the repeal of Glass-Steagall had allowed commercial banks to invest their customers deposits in high risk securities. As a result the banks were at risk of going under and taking what should have been risk free deposits with them. The result would probably have been depression.
The repeal of Glass Steagall was another bad Republican idea. Now they don’t even want to admit that everything those opposed to repeal predicted has come to fruition.
Meanwhile, all the jobs Obama swore he’d produce are no where to be found. And his buddies have all of our stimulus money in their pockets…At least what they did not give to Obama’s re-elect…In fact, nothing good economically has happened since that stupid some-beech took office. And we’re Broke, thanks to him…
Wall Street looted the Pension Plan of SC for $430 million in fees in 2013 alone.. That is the highest fee percentage of any pension plan in America and no one in government seems to give a damn.
The only pol. standing up for SC retirees is Curtis Loftis. He has studied the mess we are in and everyone else is jumping on him. Of all the statewide office holders he is the most necessary to re elect.
Agreed.
Finance has been my life and career since I graduated from Wharton in 76. I have never seen the rape of a fund more significant that that here in South Carolina. The fee expenses are completely disproportionate to the returns.
A forensic audit is needed; not a fiduciary audit or standard annual audit, as neither will have the depth or focus of a forensic and they just are not appropriate to tell the story of this travesty. Unless the stakeholders rise up the taxpayers and government employees are going to pay significantly higher rates in the future. And I mean significantly.
The portfolio construction is as if it were created by a college whiz kid that has read all the pitch books and watched “the Wolf” 15 times. It is all hubris, all inside baseball, and outside the realm of prudent investing. The adults need to take charge of that Investment Commission before it is too late.
Don’t believe me, ask any investor on Main Street. They will tell you.
Follow the money. Who is getting the kickbacks. Forensic audit is needed indeed.
There are a lot of prominent SC families that have profited handsomely from the Pension Trust Fund. And of course, many politicians too.
A family friend in Greenville made a FORTUNE off them.
Nothing will happen. It never does.
It’s a Grand Tango fest! Blame IObama, who cares Tango.
Anything you pay to the Nikki / fund / pubs will be into the pockets of Nikki/ pubs /pockets, so? Keep going? Just dont start another war for nothing other than BS, and borrow from China again! U that stupid, again?
Not up to the standards of the Bohemian Grove.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Grove
Days after it hit the MSM still no reporting from FITS on Haley’s latest blunder that cost the taxpayers 200K
http://www.thestate.com/2014/02/20/3280934/sc-governor-reaches-settlement.html
They know exactly who they are and what they’re doing. They have no shame in looting this country for everything its worth. Even this social gathering is probably too public for them to really show their true colors.
You rob a bank with a gun and you get 20 years to life.
You rob it with a balance statement you get fined or a slap on the wrist. If you don’t know anyone you get a country club stay for a few years tops.
The only sure fire way to get punished robbing it via the latter is if you rob from the robbers themselves.
People that rob the public with a balance statement are rich, well connected white people. They don’t go to jail.
There are many ways for those close to government to profit. It happens everyday. It is sad, but true, and there is not much that we can do about it.
This is an interesting article for Fits to publish,seeing as how the two main issues that these Wall Steet types care about,tax cuts and less regulation(so they can be “unleashed” to “create wealth”) are two of his major crusades.
Yet he seems to be upset with them.The bailout?That was over five years ago.Exactly ,in their present agenda does he disagree with?
“It’s good to be a banksta….”
Well, I’m like Tango, I will gladly suck their Dick to make ends meet,LOL.
Well we all know Bush was the best president we ever had, thank Grand Tango (GOD). Maybe we can move on?
Again, another good article and right on the money.
You don’t need to go far to find these 1% characters. They are abundant in Charleston, SC. You can find them all over “South of Broad Street,” and “Sullivan’s Island.”
Where they live aloof from the “little people.” Whom they don’t give a hoot about.