A little background before you read this article excerpt.
It was taken from The Battery Park City Broadsheet - specifically their September 29th - October 14th, 2008 issue - linked here to the original PDF.
Battery Park City is a (our) Lower Manhattan neighborhood, right next door to the World Trade Center site and a very short walk to Wall Street. Needless to say there have been a lot of busy neighbors around of late, and certainly folks who have lost jobs.
Despite all the honest suffering going on, the guy in this article floors me. I'm quite convinced he lives in an alternate reality. Read on...
The Party's Over
The face of the future—complete
with stunned expression and glassy,
thousand-yard-stare—was on view
in the lobby of Two World Financial
Center on the evening of a
September 15. That morning, Lehman
Brothers had imploded and
Merrill Lynch, which is headquartered
in World Financial Center and
has an employee gym in the lobby,
had announced that it was being
bought by Bank of America. Many of
the Merrill staffers exiting the gym
that night appeared defeated and
deflated by the announcement that
the firm, six years shy of its 100th
birthday, would soon cease to exist as
an independent company.
“Dave,” a trader who asked that
his real name not be used, emerged
with a dazed and weary look on his
face. “I guess it could have been
worse,” he said. “I once interviewed
for a job for Lehman Brothers. If I
was there, I’d be cleaning out my
desk right now.” Still, Dave sees
much to worry about.
“I’ve got two small children,”
he said. “This time last year, I was
thinking it would be nice to buy
them both horses when they got a
little older. My wife and I have also
been looking at private schools for
both kids.”
“Now,” he reflected, “I’m
thinking about the payments on my
condo and the mortgage on the
country house we bought back in
2006. Both have gone down in value,
but my payments haven’t. I don’t
know how much longer I’m going to
have a job at Merrill. And most of
my savings was in stock that has
dropped in value over the last two
years. So if I’m unemployed for even
a few months, we could lose one
home, or both.” About the horses
and the private schools he was considering
for his children, Dave simply
said, “forget it.”
Etc..........
* * *
The use of bold is my doing, but everything else is taken direct from the article. Follow the link and check it out for yourself.
Now that said, I'm a little bit suspicious that there was no author listed for the article AND "Dave" isn't his real name. I've seen enough The Wire episodes to question such fishy journalism.
If it is true then I risk karma retribution by invoking the term schadenfreude.
Now please excuse me while I go polish our second set of silverware (the one we never liked anyway) as I think we might need to pawn it in order to pay our next loan installment on the Mercedes.
