The Brian Lehrer Show

the economy has been smoke and mirrors for years, now the air is clearing and we see the golden years are over. pyramid scheme called the housing market. the boomers have made no plans for their care in their old age. younger gens will be burdened by them for years to come. cheap labor from the '3rd world' and the rise of China-India will not help.

plan on a long slow decline.

Maybe now we'll get our neighborhoods back.

I am yielding to financial

schadenfreud, I admit. For years people "in finance" have been ostentatiously splurging cash left and right, we went out to dinner and walked into their houses and realized what the widening

income gap really meant. The firsts to say that you are responsible for your destiny while earning hundreds of thousand of dollars, they will certainly not get my sympathy right now.

I was a stockbroker at EF Hutton on Black Monday October 19, 1987. More than 50,000 Wall St jobs were lost in the ensuing months. I went on to an excellent 18-year career as a Sales person for a large health insurance company. For those of you looking for work, you obviously have to look at a different field where your skills will still work. Take advantage of any Outplacement counseling and read career books and take a vocational interest exam.

no sympathy for them. my fear is they take the rest of us with them.

Last Friday March 14th I was laid off. I worked as a support staff member at a law firm that represented many of the investment banks you're discussing today. Business died seemingly overnight in August 2007. I've been looking ever since, to no avail. Now that I am unemployed, I am soul searching and determining the career change I will make. Also, I am considering relocation out of NYC. Bottom line - I'm done with the corporate sector!

The IT folks that are calling in do not represent the guys that are getting the 800k+ bonuses. These are the working stiff guys and that had lost their jobs because the analysts want more outsourcing. I don't believe that you will get calls from those guys.

Well well well

Hello fat cats,

wall street jobs are what is keeping capitalizm alive, and shame on you for working there in teh 1st place.

welcome to normal life.I guess you'll have to try a live like the rest of us, teachers, janitors, secretaries: from paycheck to paychek, with no health insurance, and no savings or benefits.

Aga-

Too bad your humanity eludes you. I'm afraid that most of the people you are addressing will thrive again, where success seems to have eluded you in your sad little socialist seeking existence. I hope you find happiness, its better to show sympathy to fellow human beings than gloat during their moments of sadness.

Peace

Peace, you seem to think that smart, talented and hard-working people will always end up on their feet, and those that struggle are reaping the rewards of their own failings.

This is massively unfair and simply wrong. Perhaps you will grow into old age believing this comforting canard. But I doubt it. My guess is that at some point it will become clear to you that much of life's successes and failures are primarily the by-product of dumb luck.

To: HJS and others

This isn't solely a fat cat issue! Trust, me I have no sympathy for the fat cats. People at the lower salary ranges were laid off in droves at the same time others were promoted to partner to earn big, fat cat salaries. I am not a fat cat - not even close. But because I worked for fat cats in a fat cat industry, I am a casualty of their fat cat greed/misdeeds.

Aga-memnon,

did the fat cats show humanity to the little people, during their boom years.

do you think i enjoyed picking up your carelessly discared shrimp tails off the floor.

some of you will rise again, some will jump out of the window, most will rejoin the little people, see you at the drive-thru.

lily, make better choices in future

It wasn't ALL smoke & mirrors. The financial excesses of the recent past are only a part of the economic story of our time. The truth is that a great deal of real wealth has been created for many people - not just the rich. Vast swathes of the planet are experiencing their first genuine taste of prosperty, much of which was made possible by a financial system which for the most part successfully & efficiently mediates between savers & investors on the one side and economic entrepeneurs willing & able to create new wealth on the other. We've all benefitted from this in countless ways & will continue to do so. The doomsters are no more insightful about this moment's financial markets problems than they are about poverty amelioration & wealth creation in general. Their ideological blinders prevent an honest appraisal of the situation. Perhaps an all-expenses paid two-year stay in Havana or PyongYang will help them see some of the upside of greedy finance capitalism.

Peace,

I do not seek socializm, I seek justice and some measure of equality.

Wall street fat cats ( and all those who support them on their large salries, when compared to what the rest of us make) helped keep this american model of cruel, winner- takes- old capitalism. we live in a gilded age and it is those wall street economic wizard who made the current recession possible. while most of us are already suffering, they will probably end up living off their savings.

financial success is not a measue of ones brains or work ethic but a combination of luck, family background ( class!!!) and ability to kiss ass.

i do resent wall street and everybody who works there ( except for janitors and hot dog vendors) and wish they experience what it is really like to lie in the USA for the rest (or many) of us.

Wow, James you are so brainwashed.Next you'll be telling us that the World Bank and IMF are ameliorating poverty. Ha!

Commenter:

EXACTLY.

This guest is not only great -- he's so rare he's on the radio.

so....7% of (more than a BILLION?) muslims agree with terrorism...and we SHOULDN'T be worried?

Yes, I am Brianwashed (sic:), but we are very careful to use enviornmentally-friendly detergent!!

james

letting people use their homes as a piggy bank could not have been a good idea.

i don't see how building china's middle class will help me pay my rent.

It was said in the segment that through the God-model, or the religion-model, one might argue that tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of persons have been killed/murdered/slaughtered. Why use the God-model any more?

I argue that through the non-God model, that is, through the science model, the science-and-technology-and-industry-and-commerce model, hundreds of millions of persons are being killed/murdered/slaughtered, and the life of the planet is being threatened. Why use the non-God model, that is, the science model any more?

Sincerely,

Finbarr Lismore

Middle class people buy more "stuff" & "services" than poor people do. This is so because they produce more & hence have more to exchange for the produce of others - which is fundamentally what TRADE is all about. U sell what u make & buy what others make & vice versa. Wealth creation is different from wealth redistribution. A growing middle class in China, India, Brazil, Mexico & Russia et al is good for us & does not come at our expense. If it were true that wealth could only come by stealing from others, one would have to wonder how any wealth came into being at all.

The problem is even with the financial sector's downturn, the money and wealth has already been taken from the middle class, and not to be returned in the foreseeable future.

I only have contempt for the entire middle class who allowed this to occur, and I have no sympathy for those who are now in economic pain. You voted for it, you support Bloomberg, everyone now pays the price.

Good luck New York, your going to need it.

james,

ok you got me there, but as we make less and less every year, it's not creating long term jobs here. i'm OK with the chinese getting a middle class (expect for the sprawl and consumption) but we need to know americans are not ready for that transition.

only the strong will survive.

Actually, we are making quite a lot - though manufacturing employment is declining which is a good thing IF it commes as a result of productivity improving (which it has been in American manufacturing for many years). As economys mature they become increasingly dominated by service employment, which can be high-income if it is high-value-added, which it will be if people are highly-educated. Well educated people produce (& therefore get to consume) more than not-so-well educated people do.

"if people are highly-educated." and are they?

what is the state of US education?

The state of American education is mixed. Some get very well educated, indeed, higher education is one of America's major 'exports', (i.e. many foreign students come here to get a college or graduate level education which is amongst the best in the world). But education for many in America is inadequate. Partly because the system is inadequate, but also partly because many American's do not value learning. We need to both fix the system & turn off the TV!

a friend of mine stock in Bear Stearns went from $500K to $500! The simple truth is these people are all getting paid gazillions, but they are not collectively accountable to the whole system out there that includes the rest of us. They are only accountable to shareholders, who only want to see how much money they can mint each quarter, and don't have the brains or gall to ask questions about what these guys actually cooked up to make that money. Meanwhile, Main St gets wacked and that is all the people who are living pay check to pay check and trying to be good citizens.