Back to Reality

The NYT Fashion & Style Section has done it again.  

Again it has given ironic-sympathic voice to the complaints of the Masters/Mistresses of the Universe here in NYC who are serving up Marie Antoinettish quotes by the truckloads as to how it is simply, humanly impossible for anyone (who is anyone) to live on a salary of $500,000 a year — half a mil being the draconian pay cap Barack Obama and Congressional co-horts will place on bank executives who accept funding from the government's stimulus package.

The outrage it has raised among Manhattan's wealthy is akin to the temper tantrums of a child having their pacifier taken away.  What, no more private school educations for the children? And, I have to give up the armed driver/bodyguard — and take the subway? 

Aside from Bernie Madoff and his family, who are now in serious need protection from all the rich and famous they've fleeced — who in Manhattan needs an armed bodyguard??  In post-Giuliani New York, crime has been at an all-time low over the past decade, and yet it seems there are those who consider the city to be as dangerous as Kabul or Baghdad.  

This is pure, paranoid, solipsistic fantasy.  This and the other "can't possibly live without" items detailed in Allen Sorkin's article reveals a depressing fact: that the attitudes of those leading our financial institutions has been akin to those of feudal lords — entitled individuals who live in castles and require protection and layers separating themselves from the teeming masses. 

This outlook is unrealistic, and delivers some insight into how we ended up in the massive banking crises we're now struggling to dig ourselves out of.   Sure, it's not all the Masters of the Universe's fault.  But they need to wake up and see reality for what it now is.  

If they cannot recognize this, and if they cannot rebalance their personal budgets to accommodate a $500,000/annum paycheck (which is not rocket science), then maybe they do not qualify to lead our financial institutions either.