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Jesse: Wall Street Thinks You Are a Jealous Little Malcontent

January 15, 2010 – Comments (2)

This is a fantastic rant by Jesse. Not only because it is topical and I agree with much of the rhetoric, but it digs into another part of the problem: The types of people that financial institutions attract. Now before you jump down my throat, I am NOT implying that everybody who works for a financial firms is bad / evil / corrupt. But I think the upper echelon of many financial firms have exactly the personality that Jesse describes in this post. His description of the amoral pathological personality he had to deal with is very similar to a personal story of my own. Tasty and I were discussing this very personality type on some post a few weeks ago (I can't remember which). And when I hear the "We are doing God's Work" type statements and the other justification for the exorbitant bonuses that these failing firms are making with Taxpayer money ... it gets under my skin.

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Wall Street Thinks You Are a Jealous Little Malcontent

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[excerpt]

After thinking it over, and listening carefully to the discussion on financial television and the news today, I can come to no other conclusion. Wall Street thinks that the American people are stupid cows and jealous little malcontents.

They believe that the public wants to limit the bonuses paid by Wall Street because they are just jealous and stupid. Or at least they wish to leave the view or reader with that impression.

That's the long and short of it. You, average working stiff and retiree, are just a jealous little malcontent who envies the great success of the financial sector, much like some foreign agitator who attacks the West because they envy its freedoms.

And you are seeking retribution, revenge. That is what this bank tax is all about, retribution.

An economics professor just admitted that he too feels a need for retribution at times, as an emotional response, but being a more educated fellow he sees how negative that is. Instead he proposes that if we must have some bank tax that we divert the funds received into a bank holding fund, a kind of a TARP II, to pay for future financial disasters. Forget about reform. The banks are too smart for it.

I would not call it jealousy or a need for retribution. I would say that the people as a whole have a sense of right and wrong, a sense of fairness and balance, a sense of outrage that is being held in check by patience, a remarkable forebearance, but wish to see justice done for themselves and their children, because it is the right thing, the only practical thing, to do.

But I can also understand why the Wall Street Bankers and the financial elite would see this as jealousy and envy.

    Sociopath: (so⋅ci⋅o⋅path) a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.


The most amoral, pathological son of a bitch I ever worked with, who by the way was enormously charismatic and charming when on public display, was a big tech entrepreneur from the Boston area. When his grandiose schemes started to fall apart, as much from the impracticality of his ego as from the fact that no one would trust him any longer, having senselessly betrayed everyone including his closest friends, he said to me in all the sincerity he could muster, "I am failing because people want to drag me down to their level."

And I can assure you, the halls of too many corporations and big government are infested with such power needing, neurotically driven personality types. This is what makes the rule of law, the Constitution, so indispensable.

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