New York – Insight: Why Wall Street Still Doesn’t Get It

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    Occupy Wall Street protesters  crossing the Brooklyn Bridge wave to Manhattan-bound traffic on the roadway below after a rally in Foley Square, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011 in New York. Organizers with the Service Employees International Union and progressive groups staged similar bridge marches in several cities in an event that was planned weeks ago, but happened to coincide with rallies marking two months since the start of the Occupy movement. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)New York – It was a telling moment at the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

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    John Paulson, the hedge-fund trader who famously made billions betting on the collapse of the housing market, was threatened by the demonstrators with a march on his Upper East Side home in New York last month. Paulson responded by putting out a press release that described his $28 billion, 120-person fund as an exemplar of the American Dream: “Instead of vilifying our most successful businesses, we should be supporting them and encouraging them to remain in New York City.”

    Other captains of finance like to portray themselves as humble entrepreneurs. One owner of a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund grumbled in the midst of the financial crisis that he has to worry not only about making trading decisions but also about “all the hassles the come with running a small business.”

    With U.S. cities moving this week to crack down on Occupy Wall Street encampments – including the one in New York’s Zuccotti Park – the staying power of the movement is in question. Whatever its future, it’s clear that so far, the Occupiers haven’t changed many minds on Wall Street over blame for the country’s hard times. The cognitive disconnect between the protesters and the captains of finance is alive and well.

    David Mooney, chief executive officer of Alliant Credit Union in Chicago, one of the nation’s larger credit unions, used to work at a one of Wall Street’s top banks, JPMorgan Chase. There’s a vast cultural gap between Wall Street and his new world, he says: Old friends from the Street, he says, now jokingly refer to him as a “socialist.” A credit union is supposed to be run in the interests of all members, he says, while commercial bankers tend to see consumers as customers who can be “exploited” by layering on more fees.

    Says Mooney: “I don’t say this lightly, but the consumer is simply an income stream and exploiting that is the purpose of the banking organization.”

    In conversations with nearly two dozen current and former bankers, finance professionals and money managers across the United States, the prevailing sentiment is that the anger at Wall Street’s elite is misguided and misdirected. Blame the politicians and policymakers in Washington, many of them say, for encouraging people to buy homes they couldn’t afford and doing nothing to stop or discourage U.S. consumers from piling on more than $10 trillion in household debt.

    “I think everyone gets what the anger is about… But you just can’t say, ‘Well I want all debts forgiven.’ That is not happening,” says one West Coast trader, who like most still working in the financial services industry, declined to be identified by name in this article.

    The disconnect, says Jason Ader, a former top Wall Street casino analyst turned hedge fund manager, is in part a simple product of Wall Street’s isolation from the hardship out there. Ader says he spends a lot of his time in Las Vegas, one of America’s hardest-hit housing markets, and thus wasn’t too surprised by this fall’s anti-Wall Street outburst.

    “I see plenty of despair in places like Las Vegas, where in some neighborhoods every other house is vacant or foreclosed and lots are overgrown by weeds,” says Ader, who sits on the boards of Las Vegas Sands Corp and a small Nevada community bank called Western Liberty Bancorp.

    But the 43-year-old Ader, who manages $200 million in his hedge fund, says it’s a different story for many of the wealthy who work in finance in New York City and don’t spend a lot of time in states with high unemployment and high foreclosure rates. Living in Manhattan or the Hamptons or hedge fund havens like Greenwich, Connecticut, can lead to a bit of myopia, he says.

    “At first I had friends who were scratching their heads at the protests,” says Ader.

    BLAME GAME

    To put it bluntly, many on Wall Street still see the events leading up to the financial crisis as a case of banks having legitimately sold something – whether it be mortgages or securities backed by those loans – that someone wanted to buy.

    Thomas Atteberry, a partner and portfolio manager with Los Angeles-based First Pacific Advisors, a $16 billion money management firm, says his success “wasn’t a gift” and he had to work hard to get where he is. Atteberry says he understands the frustration many feel about income inequality. But he said the problem isn’t with those who are successful, but rather our “tax codes and regulations.”

    While some members of the financial elite say they are willing to pay higher taxes, they note the picture for Wall Street firms is not as sunny as some on Main Street might paint it. Wall Street banks already are beginning to shed jobs, and consulting firm Johnson Associates Inc. is predicting bonuses for those who remain will shrink by 20 percent to 30 percent.

    Complaints over new financial regulations burdening Wall Street firms are a major reason blamed for the layoffs. Sit down with a hedge fund manager or a top trader and it won’t take long before he or she grabs some spreadsheet that shows all the new rules and regulations coming out of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill.

    Many of America’s well-to-do, not just Wall Streeters, say they don’t feel particularly advantaged. A recent survey by marketing firm HNW Inc. found that half of the nation’s richest 1 percent “don’t see themselves as being part of that elite group.” Also, 44 percent of those surveyed told HNW’s pollsters they already pay too much in taxes.

    Maybe it is just the ethos of Wall Street, where success is defined solely by who makes the most money, that makes it hard for financiers to feel they’ve wronged anyone. But in a time of 9 percent unemployment and 15 percent of U.S. citizens receiving food stamps, some Wall Street alums say the financial elite are doing themselves no favors by giving the appearance of shrugging off the current mood.

    “I think Wall Street hasn’t taken in how much anger there is out there and they haven’t taken partial responsibility for the financial crisis,” says Brookings Institution fellow Douglas Elliott, who was an investment banker for two decades before joining the liberal-oriented public policy group. “I think both sides – Wall Street and Main Street – misunderstand each other.”

    Some who get paid to advise the rich on how to deal with the media and the public are telling clients to pay attention.

    Robert Dilenschneider, founder and principal of The Dilenschneider Group corporate consulting group, recently sent a report to his clients telling them that many of the protesters taking part in the Occupy movement are not a bunch of unemployed crazies and hippies.

    “The CEOs in big board rooms in Paris, in Zurich and New York don’t normally think about people who are demonstrating in parks,” says Dilenschneider, whose firm advises some of the biggest companies in the world. “In the banking and financial area, we are telling our clients you have to explain more completely what makes up your business and why your profits are what they are.”

    MOM AND POP HEDGE FUNDS

    Some of the disconnect is simply a matter of lifestyle and the fact that the super wealthy really do live differently from everyone else. Hedge fund managers and bankers fly around on private jets, live in palatial penthouse apartments overlooking Central Park and have second homes in the country.

    In New York City, the average pay for those working in finance is $361,183, more than five times the average salary of $66,106 for all workers in the city, according to the New York State Department of Labor.

    This disparity in income and attitudes was evident in the response of hedge fund managers like Paulson who portrayed themselves as humble businessmen. Says Wall Street historian Charles Geisst, “Hedge funds may be small businesses in terms of labor intensity, but in terms of capital intensity they are just the opposite.”

    A spokesman for Paulson said he had nothing more to add on the subject.

    Former Wall Street practitioners say the Street does not lend itself to a lot of introspection. “The world of investment bankers and especially the trading floor region is notoriously hermetically sealed,'” says Kenneth Froewiss, a retired JPMorgan Chase investment banker and former finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “The walls may be filled with screens beaming the latest news, but there is typically an obliviousness as to what is happening across the street.”

    LESSONS LEARNED

    There are exceptions, of course. Some are saying it may be time for the government which has bailed out the banking system to help millions of struggling homeowners.

    One of those is former top Pacific Investment Management Co executive Paul McCulley, best known for his analysis on central banks and monetary policy when he worked at the world’s biggest bond fund. McCulley, who retired a year ago from Newport Beach, California-based PIMCO to become a consultant with a public policy firm, enjoys the wealth he accumulated in his old role. He lives in a house by the water where he docks his two boats. But he says Wall Street went too far.

    “Our society was ripe for a convulsion about social justice, and Occupy Wall Street was the catalyst for that,” says McCulley. “New York can be very insular. It is not the real world and neither is Newport Beach.”

    Now that he’s no longer working for PIMCO, McCulley is a bit more free to speak his mind. And he says the only way to jumpstart the U.S. economy is for the federal government to get behind a serious program to encourage consumer debt forgiveness and principal reductions on mortgages by banks. (http://tinyurl.com/3cbdjpk)

    McCulley noted that mortgage firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been propped up by about $169 billion in federal aid since they were rescued by the government in 2008, yet there’s a “a moral overtone” to the argument against reducing mortgage debt burdens for individual borrowers.

    “Wall Street capitalism has given us a foul stench in our society,” says McCulley.

    The disconnect continues.

    Just this week, top executives at Fannie and Freddie found themselves drawing fire on Capitol Hill for trying to distribute nearly $13 million in bonuses to key employees.

    And the October 31 collapse of MF Global Holdings is prompting some critics to say Wall Street hasn’t learned any lessons from the financial crisis. The futures brokerage house filed for bankruptcy after investors and traders became fearful that MF Global had taken on too much exposure to European sovereign debt in a bid to juice revenues.

    The risky trade was put on by former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs Group chief executive. Last year, Corzine was saying Wall Street investment banks had taken on too much risk in the months leading up to the financial crisis. On the lecture circuit Corzine was calling for tighter regulation of Wall Street, even while his firm was borrowing more and more money to bet on some of the riskiest European debt. A Corzine representative declined to comment. (http://link.reuters.com/xad25s)

    William Cohan, the author of several Wall Street-related books and a former Lazard investment banker, said MF Global was acting as if the 2007-2008 crisis never happened: “You would have to be living under a rock if you didn’t get the message of the financial crisis.” (Reported by Matthew Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan, with additional reporting by Sam Forgione; editing by Michael Williams and Claudia Parsons)


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    28 Comments
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    Babishka
    Member
    Babishka
    12 years ago

    Bonuses might shrink by 20-30%? So instead of a 5 million bonus they get only 4 million? Oh boo hoo hoo. Please tell that to the 50,000 banking industry workers who lost their jobs this year.

    Oh, at my job I also earned a “bonus.” All the honored employees were taken out to lunch at a fancy restaurant! When I explain to my supervisor that I couldn’t eat anything at this event because it wasn’t kosher, they gave me a $50 gift card.

    Think of how much money the banking industry could save, and keep employees, by giving $50 gift cards instead of million dollar bonuses!

    SherryTheNoahide
    SherryTheNoahide
    12 years ago

    “One owner of a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund grumbled in the midst of the financial crisis that he has to worry not only about making trading decisions but also about “all the hassles the come with running a small business.”

    LOL!!!

    Oh no! Whatever shall he do?!?! Clutch the pearls! *gasping*

    How will he feed his family?!?!

    Jeesh….*shaking my head*

    Who can listen to these people on Wall Street have the NERVE to complain like this?!

    These people are the biggest bunch of greedy, whiny children I’ve EVER seen in my life! And you guys think the Occupy Wall Street people are children?! Pa-leaze!

    Running a multi-billion dollar industry & calling it a “small business”, not to mention Mitt Romney saying things like “Corporations are People too!” & all of the Republicans trying to allow Corporations to have VOTING RIGHTS in this country, as if the entity itself was a “person”…

    Are just SOME of the multitude of things that people are sick to DEATH of & protesting in the 1st place!

    But look how many people will come on here & say things like “Every person has the right to keep their ‘hard-earned’ money” for themselves!”

    Hard-earned?!

    THEIR money??

    NOT 100% true, is it?!?!

    Buchwalter
    Buchwalter
    12 years ago

    Some of these fianancial wizards should have gone to jail or at least be charged. They deceived trusting foolish investors , gambled away their money and then left with huge bonuses. Poor snooks who shoplift food are prosecuted. This reminds when I was liberated and SS officer claimed the acted under order and later received their German person for having served the Vaterland killing Jewish children, women and men. These financial wizard knowlingly sold phony financial “instruments” to gullible investors in the name of the invisible hand. Mr.Greenspan claimed the financial market will correct itself, it did.

    Buchwalter
    Buchwalter
    12 years ago

    I don’t see any reason why they could. The comitted financial fraud and went away scott free. They broke the fiduciary trust robbed poeple of their hard earned money and left their positions with large bonuses, fiancial gains. Fuld the CEO of Lehman Brothers made a huge profit. No penalties under the civl code. All we need more suckers to hand over the money and sell them more default certificates.

    shredready
    shredready
    12 years ago

    the issues also is hedge funds and such type of business do not produce anything of value just move money and make money with zero benefit to anybody but themselves

    that is why the anger it at them

    I wonder if a labor works hard to fix something in Paulson house and asks him for 1,000 and says I worked hard if he would pay?

    while gates and jobs (I know he died) ) are super rich one does not see such anger at them since they at least make a product or other rich of industries .

    amazing they say we need to charge 5 for a debit card since we are losing money at the same time giving out 100’s of million in bonuses and teh CEO making more money than he ever made about 300,000,00 and say sorry no money for you we are cash tight

    Reb Yid
    Reb Yid
    12 years ago

    The OWS people arent protesting against wall st types who’ve committed fraud, whom everyone agrees should be in jail. Theyre protesting against everyone who makes a lot of money. They think no one should be allowed to make a lot of money, or keep that money, and the money should be taken from them and given to everyone else. There is no reasonable basis in halacha or secular ethics for this ideology.

    ormeo
    ormeo
    12 years ago

    Cont.
    You would find ways to either cut expenses or find new ways of making that money. The same goes for business. When government meddles, everyone loses.

    SherryTheNoahide
    SherryTheNoahide
    12 years ago

    Also, I’d really like to add: What good is religion, if it isn’t teaching you the values of kindness, sharing, compassion & charity?!

    I feel like telling all of the greedy people to just “Go Gault” then, if they don’t like it here, and don’t feel like paying people a decent liveable wage!

    Let them all go move to China, where they can rip people off & pay them $2.50 an hour for slave labor, if they don’t want to pay people fairly here! (lol)

    But here in America… the working people of this country have some dignity & self-respect, and there is no reason to treat us like slaves & keep cutting our health care, benefits, worker’s rights & pensions… just so they can keep their billion dollars worth of bonuses rolling in every year!

    Give me a break!
    >[:-P

    Buchwalter
    Buchwalter
    12 years ago

    I Jewish trademark according to the way I was raised is honesty, an erlicher Yid. Wall Street was not honest, transparent or fulfilling the trust of those entrusting them with their money

    Buchwalter
    Buchwalter
    12 years ago

    All these “Torah observing” specimens making postings on this website should remeber that inn Vayikra there is written do not put a stumbling before the blind. Medrashim tell us it means that if the person is unaware of the value of the item he is selling or if he is buyer of an item does not understand the value you must explain to him the value . Wall Street failed and all these Torah observing “executives” went along with the dishonesty or plainly speaking ganeiva