Afternoon:
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Ever since this financial crisis began, Wall Street has warned that if it doesn't pay its employees properly they will leave. But after nearly a year of dwindling compensation and evaporating net worth, few have thrown down their Montblanc pens and quit.
Many have been fired, of course, but on the whole it seems bankers have a higher pain threshold than their superiors think.
In New York, the latest wallop came this week from the state government, with its plans to raise income tax on households earning more than $450,000. There are also looming federal tax increases and the unresolved issue of how to tax bonuses.
House prices are still falling, and city services are being trimmed - before you even consider how wretched recent mont hs have been for financiers professionally.
The whole country hates them. Anti-capitalist protests are planned in lower Manhattan this week. Even Soho House, not exactly a Trotskyite hotbed, has just sent members of its Manhattan outpost a letter saying it wants to return to its creative roots. No more bankers on dates.
So why have so few bankers left the industry? Surely it can't be that the whole "if we don't pay, they will leave" line was a hoax?
Like the car industry, banking had simply grown too big. So big that bogus deals had to be created to keep everyone at work. It will be much smaller for a long time, with more money going to fewer people.
The only reasons I can see for staying in finance now are because you have a real shot at being one of the few - or because you are a raging masochist.
* How bad is this economy? This bad: Condé Nast editors are taking the subway to work. The kings and queens of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and other glossy titles are forgoing their limos to ride the rails. Where does all of this end?
* Quote of the week from Andres Piedrahita, chief fundraiser for the Fairfield Greenwich fund which was last night charged with fraud over its role putting clients' money into Bernie Madoff's funds. He said: "I look at myself in the morning and I'm very proud of what I have done and so are my partners. Nobody knew anything about anything." Precisely.
