Beating a Dead Horse- Wall Street

They are killing Manhattan.  And when I say they I mean the douche bags from Wall Street and wherever else that nought their way to coolness.  And in the path of destruction they leave behind, they make Manhattan and New York less and less cool every time they swipe those credit cards.  A friend of mine went to a birthday party at a popular NYC lounge with a group of friends and they must have spent $50K on the evening.  Fifty thousand dollars, just imagine that.  One evening of drinking costing $50K.  Thats an annual salary for some people.  I thought it might have ended three years ago when the economy went bust but they haven't learned anything.  Now they are just profiting on a new scam or they went back to what they always knew would work- 

                   Conflict in the Middle East = Rising Oil Prices

Why do the oil prices go up?  Because commodities brokers who deal in futures help artificially elevate that price just on the basis that they think the prices will go up because there is diminished supply.  The funny part is one day someone is going to realize that there are a ton of alternative energy sources and thats when the real will blow up will happen.  Someone out there one day will have enough money and enough guts to   make oil obsolete.  

I thought Obama would be the type of guy who curbed Wall Street, in the end he just ended up doing the same exact thing they have always done.  Let the banks dictate everything and punishing publicly traded companies by over-regulating them.  In reality all they did was make more money for lawyers and accountants and made it harder for these Company to operate.  In the next ten years offering your stock publicly is going to become antiquated and too expensive.  The reality is that publicly traded companies have very little to do with the embarrassment of wealth and greed that exists downtown.  They are just some of the small pieces on the board for JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

The bottom line is that these banks have attempted to create a system where they make money regardless of anything- i.e.- a tsunami hits in Japan and devastates a country- yes certain insurance took losses but I guaranty you that there is a large silent contingent down on Wall Street that poured some champagne when it happened because they'll make a fortune on something related to this disaster.  Same thing goes for the guys who bet on oil to go up and they celebrated when all of these revolutions popped up in the Middle East.    

All the bonuses are back and the obnoxious spending has returned because they figured out a way to delete all of those losses on their balance sheets.  The funny part is, the American tax payer probably paid to help delete those losses.  And yet here we are again, the economy is quickly improving but its improving for the people who helped wreck it in the first place.  And now these guys are even greedier than before because they are not going to finance things like alternative energy.  They will bury it for the next fifty years so that this world will deteriorate an even higher level than before.  

In the end its all of our fault.  I am a hypocrite to because right not I am looking to go work for investment bank or a private equity fund.  We help fuel this fire by being envious of all the money.  Money rules so much and most of the time we don't know why.  I mean lets be honest, no one needs eight houses, no one needs five cars, no one needs to have a $400 dinner.  But we do it anyway given the opportunity.  And then we have the guys who open the restaurants or the clubs that solicit and welcome those douche bags that drop $50k in a night.  Then you have more clubs and restaurants doing the same thing, and why?  Because its profitable and its the best way to stay in business.   You can't blame them.  That club made a lot more money last night than the bar I went to and ran up $100 tab in beers and shots.  

It is sad because there is no soul left out there.  The only recent cultural phenomenon that isn't motivated by commercial desires is Twitter.  But now Twitter has become one quick way to advertise something.  It was originally conceived as a social medium and I guess it still is but now all they have is a bunch of people trying to make a name for themselves or selling some shitty product.  And why?  Because Twitter has been funded by Venture Capital firms who need to get a return on their investment.  So over time Twitter will lose its soul too if it hasn't already.  

I don't think will ever get back to the point we were at in the sixties, when there were people doing things because they were right, not because whatever it was made them money.  I am not even sure its possible even if we tried because everything just costs too much money.  I'm not campaigning to bring it back because I am in that same paper chase too.  I guess I am just writing the obituary of large scale altruism in the United States.