What the Hell?!? Friday - Shared Sacrifice

Banking and trading revenues were way off in 2011 - whodda thunkit?

This means smaller bonus checks for people like Andrew Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc

 Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

Wow.  I sure feel his pain.  When I was 46, we had four kids in college.  Two were on scholarships, and two went to very affordable and close-to-home Eastern Michigan U.  Our summer rental was one week at Devil's Lake in Michigan's Irish Hills.  I think It cost about $600 back then.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”

Wouldn't it be awful if those kids had to go to a (gasp) public school and rub elbows with - oh, I dunno - maybe my grandchildren?  If they did, then maybe the Rethugs wouldn't be so keen on destroying public education.
 

Wall Street’s cash bonus pool fell by 14 percent last year to $19.7 billion, the lowest since 2008, according to projections by New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. 

“It’s a disaster,” said Ilana Weinstein, chief executive officer of New York-based search firm IDW Group LLC. “The entire construct of compensation has changed.”

Somehow, I have a hard time believing that is a bad thing.

Richard Scheiner, 58, a real-estate investor and hedge-fund manager, said most people on Wall Street don’t save. 

“When their means are cut, they’re stuck,” said Scheiner, whose New York-based hedge fund, Lane Gate Partners LLC, was down about 15 percent last year. “Not so much an issue for me and my wife because we’ve always saved.” 

Scheiner said he spends about $500 a month to park one of his two Audis in a garage and at least $7,500 a year each for memberships at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester and a gun club in upstate New York. A labradoodle named Zelda and a rescued bichon frise, Duke, cost $17,000 a year, including food, health care, boarding and a daily dog-walker who charges $17 each per outing, he said.

There's a whole lot more misery in the Bloomberg article I linked above.  Go read it if you're hard-hearted enough to indulge yourself in a little schadenfreude.

Maybe I'd feel some sympathy (though, to be honest, since these jokers bring home over a third of a million dollars - a 13x multiple of median income - before bonuses, and spend every god-damned dime of it - probably not) if these people were actually contributing to society, rather than collecting usurious rents for engaging in totally non-value added activities that have distorted and perverted the American economy over the last four decades.

That is just about the span of Adrew Schiff's life.  Pity the poor sap.  He really doesn't know any better.

H/T to the LW