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Sunday, 14 October 2012

Wall Street’s Forgotten Victims Have Some Advice - Bloomberg

Wall Street’s Forgotten Victims Have Some Advice - Bloomberg
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1 comment:

RAYLOKE said...

I didn’t go looking for the kid. He found me. Of course, it stood to reason, with what’s been happening on Wall Street, that the children of Greenwich, Connecticut, must be taking a serious financial hit.

The end of cash bonuses, the ramping up of financial regulation, the shrinking of the Goldman Sachs analyst pool, Chelsea Clinton’s confessing that she quit her Wall Street job to find meaning in life: Wherever you turn, you find signs that an era in which a lot of children were paid to keep quiet is grinding to an end.

About Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis is the author of the best-sellers The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine; The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game; Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game; and Liars Poker among other works.

More about Michael Lewis
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Michel Lewis



.Maybe the game is over; maybe it isn’t. But one thing is certain: If you are 12 years old, and your dad works on Wall Street, it’s a lot less likely Beyonce will be singing at your 13th birthday party.

At any rate the 12-year-old child who texted me out of the blue simply wanted to pass along a few tips. I’m not sure if he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart, or testing the market for a book deal. But he says that he knows a lot of other kids just like him, who have at least one parent who used to make a lot of money trading bonds on Wall Street, and now, instead, were being handed a lot of illiquid bank stock of dubious value.

For kids traumatized by the Wall Street downturn, he had the following advice:

-- For starters, you need to make a point of actually meeting your dad -- or your mom, but most likely it is your dad who is the problem.

He’s the one who controls the money flows but up till now he’s been a total ghost. Out the door at 5:30 in the morning, home at 11 at night. And no matter how tired he is on weekends, your mother always makes him take her out to parties, so when you do catch a glimpse of him he’s hung over and distant. You will need to take the initiative here. Set your alarm early, or, even better, stay up late. Park yourself at the front door and when your dad walks through it, stick out your hand and introduce yourself. He needs to know who he’s dealing with.

-- Accept that you are the real victim in all this.

The moaning and groaning your dad has been doing about his bonuses won’t actually change his lifestyle. He isn’t the owner of the first-loss piece of the family collateralized-debt obligation: You are. Everything from summer sailing camp in the Bahamas to the smoking-hot Scandinavian nanny is probably now on a list of possible cutbacks. As totally unfair as these cuts are (you aren’t the one who lost all the money), you shouldn’t fight them. You don’t want to come across as “spoiled.” If you complain too loudly, your dad might use it as an excuse to rationalize his failure. He will start saying things to your mom like, “It may actually do him some good not to have everything he wants.” The smart first reaction is to accept that you will be making some pretty horrible sacrifices. Pretend you don’t feel a thing. Even though, inside, it’s killing you.

-- Study the way your dad’s mind works.

If you are at least 12, it’s easy to tell yourself he’s kind of dumb. I mean, even back when he was making a lot of money he didn’t notice very much about life around the house. But -- trust me -- he is really smart, especially about money. It’s just that he isn’t like other dads. He thinks emotions are stupid, for example, because emotions cost him money when he’s trading. He spends his day trying not to feel anything, so he sort of gets used to it.

.../cont.

14 October 2012 at 08:43

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