Career Change

If you go down to midtown today your in for a great surprise.

Lehman Bros have bite the dust you can hear the brokers cries.

Midtown Manhattan is in a meltdown.

The scene over the weekend (reminiscent of the Bear Stearns collapse) was of Brooks Brother’s blazers and open neck shirts exiting Lincoln town cars, entering glass towers, had familiar anxiety about it.

The usual mob was there, Federal regulators, Dept of Treasury and the remaining bankers who had not fallen from grace were giving up another weekend away from the golf course.

Then Black Monday.

Lehman was not going to be bailed out by the government contrary to the rumor mill and therefore was facing immediate bankruptcy. Then just when you thought it could not get any worse, Bank of America scoops up Merrill Lynch for the price of a ham sandwich. Not content to be outdone AIG (American International Group) spills its guts and looks puppy dog style towards the Fed.

Tell me… can you fit all that in one headline?

Now we turn to camera shots of tearful workers carrying boxes, staring into our living rooms and offices questioning the wisdom of the government in not bailing them out.

Guess what? You said you were too big to fail.
Where does it end?
Does the taxpayer get another rear end maneuver?

I have news for you, AIG are bigger and sadly they’ll probably get DGI (divine governmental intervention.)

But as former employees ponder the future and review the banking world as a career, take a look across the pond. On the same day in London, Sotheby’s was giddy with record breaking sales of zebra’s, bulls and sharks in a tanks of formaldehyde.

The auction house was delirious with the work of one artist, Damien Hirst who racked over $200 million in two days, smashing every record by a dead or living artist.

Clearly the Art World is not in trouble. Which brings me to career change; perhaps bypass E Bay and start converting your office chairs and wares into some gold and diamond encrusted art piece.

Not that I’m inciting violence, then drag your nearest hedge fund manager and soak him in formaldehyde. Then find some in work fund manager to buy it from you for an insane amount of Euro’s.

How about that for revenge and a pension plan?

As Damien Hirst said “Art is what you can get away with”