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I’m quitting my job today to become a tour guide. I’m going to offer fanny-packed, fat asses from the Midwest a personal tour through what was once New York’s financial center.
We’ll start the tour in Grand Central, and make our way to the building formerly known as Bear Stearns, and talk about the greatest real estate steal since beads were passed to Indians. I’ll make up some nonsense about secret passages between that building and JPMorgan, because tourists like that stuff.
Then it’s over to Lehman Brothers Barclays, where people can have their picture made with the largest, ugliest sign of monkey bile blue in the world. Who would’ve thought Lehman’s original monstrosity would one day be considered tame when compared to what Barclays put up. We’ll also be sure and stop by 2 CPW so people can see where Erin Callan had racks of cloths brought to her since she was too busy making up numbers to have time to eat and shop.
We’ll definitely make our way downtown. The New York Fed will be a good stop. I’ll point out the corner where John Thain put his nuts in a jar and handed them over to Ken Lewis. I’m sure people will want to see the street formerly called Wall Street and its symbolic bull’s sudden case of blue balls.
Finally, we’ll be sure and wave as we pass by the Wall Street Journal’s offices, the same way they waved off excess leverage without bothering to stop and talk to anyone.
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Do you ever feel poor? Like you are just scraping together enough money each month to barely make it by?
Well, now you can see where you rank in terms of world salaries or as they put it on the GlobalRichList:
Every year we gaze enviously at the lists of the richest people in world.
Wondering what it would be like to have that sort of cash. But where
would you sit on one of those lists? Here’s your chance to find out.
Just plug in your salary (it even adjusts for Yen, Pounds, US Dollars, Canadian Dollars and Euros) and they will tell you where you where your slary falls in terms of others in the world.
Little tidbits like “Did you know MIcrosfot CEO Bill Gates has more wealth than the bottom 45 percent of American Households combined.”
Once you see where you sit on the Global Rich List you may be inclined to make a donation to a charity to help those less fortunate (and trust me, there are probably a few people less fortunate than you)
and they have it all set up for you to do so right on the website. Pretty convenient.
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From today’s New York Times:
The gross domestic product grew at a 0.6 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday, holding steady from the last three months of 2007.
The expansion, however slim, came as something of a relief to Wall Street, which had been bracing for a contraction. Many analysts have labeled the current downturn a recession, but the economy appears so far to have avoided the informal definition of two consecutive quarters of contraction.
No matter how much the FT and the Economist think they can editorially will this nation into recession, the numbers betray slowing growth, not a recession. At this point, given the 0.6% growth in GDP in the first quarter, the earliest the U.S. economy could actually hit “recession” would be September 30, 2008.
