'I have a conscience': the Wall Streeters fighting for Bernie Sanders in New York

[pantsonfire]

The financial industry looms large in the coming primary – and some bankers say they’ll push for the Vermont senator even if his policies could hurt their careers

One of the big name Wall Street figures stood up, proclaimed grandly that he was speaking on behalf of every financial person in the room, and then slammed into the Democratic lawmakers for having had the audacity even to consider disbanding a low-tax arrangement popular with hedge fund managers known as “carried interest”.

“That was startling to me,” said one of the other financiers present in the room that day. “Here was a gathering of Wall Street’s greatest minds and what were we discussing? Not how to generate more jobs or create an economy that works for everyone, but how to protect our vested interests and tax advantages.”

The fact that Frank – a prominent New York hedge fund manager – is only willing to talk to the Guardian anonymously itself tells a story...He looks at his fellow hedge fund folk, and thinks to himself that “they have made so much money, yet all they want to do is preserve what they’ve got. It’s got so out of whack that virtually nobody is willing to think about the basic unfairness of income inequality or how to improve the economy.”

Frank, still speaking anonymously, agrees. “Hillary Clinton is paying lip-service to Wall Street changes. Maybe in her heart she means business, but for me income inequality is the civil rights issue of our time, and I feel strongly we need a president who is totally committed to making this happen.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/14/new-york-primary-bernie-sanders-wall-street?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Version+CB+header&utm_term=167141&subid=17913976&CMP=ema_565

[pantsonfire]

1. The Pitchforks Are Coming…For Us Plutocrats by 0.1%er Nick Hanauer

At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country—the 99.99 percent—is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.

But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014

[COLGATE4]

2. The rest of the quoted 'article':

That was startling to me,” said one of the other financiers present in the room that day. “Here was a gathering of Wall Street’s greatest minds and what were we discussing? Not how to generate more jobs or create an economy that works for everyone, but how to protect our vested interests and tax advantages.”

Then the Wall Street financiers were overcome by a sense of guilt, deciding that their lives up to that point had been all in vain and that they had unjustly defrauded their fellow citizens. So they immediately resigned from their cushy, $2MM jobs and, calling their wives (and girlfriends) to tell them that they (the Financiers) were horrible, shameful persons and that, to make amends for all the evil they (the Wall Street running capitalist dogs) had done they were now all immediately joining the Peace Corps and leaving for Ghana dressed in sackcloth and ashes in order to expiate their collective sins by helping teach the underprivileged Ghainians how to weave reed baskets and join the global economy.

The End.

You see- it's not hard to make this shit up.

[pantsonfire]

3. You think it's bullshit? n/t

[COLGATE4]

4. Sounds very implausible.

If someone posted it first hand here on DU I'd expect to see a whole bunch of "Cool story, Bro" replies.

[pantsonfire]

5. How implausible is this....

You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014

[COLGATE4]

11. Also pretty implausible.

[JackRiddler]

6. Ah, but that is not what happened.

They weren't overcome by their sense of guilt, they did not resign, nor did the anonymous source for the story do anything of the sort.

The idea that a few - a few! - hedge fund managers may feel this way - feel this way - even as they continue reaping the plunder for which they have programmed themselves is not at all implausible; nor that such would want to remain anonymous when talking about it to a newspaper.

[COLGATE4]

7. No, it's not. And statistically speaking, it's not impossible that

a few - very few- hedge fund managers might unburden themselves of guilt for earning obscene amounts of money for the no-value added services they provide. I'm just saying that I've never seen or heard one do it, especially in a style that's reminiscent of nothing so much as the old-style Stalinist "confessions to the group" and so find the whole 'uplifting' story to be more than a touch suspicious.

[JackRiddler]

8. Maybe, maybe not.

I do not find it implausible that a few among thousands would indeed talk this way, and feel a catharsis in doing so. Although plausibility is not necessarily equivalent to truth.

Even the real life Gordon Gekko, as he calls himself, is willing to talk this way in his name and on record.

[COLGATE4]

10. Our real life Gordon Gecko is willing to say anything in his name

and on the record at any given moment. The problem is that nothing he says is consistent from sentence to sentence, much less from day to day.

[renate]

9. I have a lot of admiration for people who can say "I got mine, and now you deserve yours"

It must be hard to be in that environment of greed and to look not towards climbing higher and amassing more but to help those who are below and trying to climb up too--and to understand that you're doing well not because you're so brilliant but because the system is rigged in your favor. Good for them!

[COLGATE4]

12. I would too, if I ever find one. nt