Livid Wall Streeters See Themselves as Victims

By Harry Kimball, Newser Staff

Posted Apr 20, 2009 4:03 PM CDT

(Newser) – Main Street doesn’t hold a monopoly on victimhood, Gabriel Sherman writes in New York. From AIG execs and their disappearing bonuses to Wall Street bankers who get dirty looks, the once-privileged feel like they’re shouldering too much blame. “It is difficult to sympathize with these people,” Sherman writes, “but you can understand their shock: Their world has been turned on its head.”

The wealthy financial elite is particularly worried about being taxed into relative poverty. They fight “when you try and take the bone away, even if they didn’t deserve that bone in the first place,” said one insider. An argument Sherman heard “over and over” was “that the high cost of living like a wealthy person in New York necessitates higher salaries. It was loopy logic,” Sherman writes, “but expressed sincerely.”

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The New York Stock Exchange. (AP Photo)

People walk to work on Wall Street. (AP Photo)

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (AP Photo)

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By some Ayn Rand–ian logic, the virtue of efficient markets distributing capital to where it is most needed justifies extreme salaries—these are the wages of the meritocracy. They see themselves as the fighter pilots of capitalism. - Gabriel Sherman

You can’t live in New York and have kids and send them to school on $75,000. And you have the Obama administration suggesting that. He’s being disingenuous. He knows that you can’t live in New York on $75,000. - Goldman veteran

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