Biz media's ridiculous elegies of Wall Street

Yvette Kantrow, the executive editor of The Deal, writes Sunday about how the business media are taking bankers to task for strategies that just a few years ago they lauded.

Kantrow writes, “Well, maybe they can become mannies. Or open a B&B. Or bake cookies. Which brings us to that other staple of downturn stories: Wall Streeters finding happiness pursuing less lucrative but more ‘rewarding’ careers. The Times on Sept. 24 told us about Jessi Walter ‘a 27-year-old Harvard grad who used to research credit products at Bear’ but is ‘now running children’s baking classes through a company called Cupcake Kids.’ One banker in the piece turned to religion; another went to work for New York City’s school system.

“The story was a rare, if strange, attempt to humanize bankers (at least those like Walter) and garner sympathy for the Street’s hoi polloi. ‘Not everybody on Wall Street is a millionaire, and as the turmoil in the markets spreads, it is as much a pandemic of the everyman as it is of the Hamptons set,’ it begins. ‘For every Porsche-driving trader, two to three people at these companies answer the phones, keep the computers running and shine the floors.’

“Apparently, these ‘everymen’ like the high life as much as their bosses do. The first one we meet tells of being so ‘mesmerized’ by ‘a juicy steak dinner on the corporate account and a Town Car to drive him home’ that he quit college to join Bear’s tech support staff. Now his job will end on Oct. 31. ‘I couldn’t understand: How come me?’ he asks. ‘I was just this average Joe, but I became captivated by Wall Street.'”

Read more here.