Most jobs would go, and the payroll was not protected - with the next pay cheque due this Friday.
5000 London mortgages to become 'distressed'? (And Lehman employs 25 thousand people globally... what's the size of the hit in Manhattan?)
Like the Enron critters, many of these people had large portions of their savings in Lehman shares. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
These people always had the choice to do something useful with their lives. But no - they decided to follow the herd and work in the City.
How many companies have these idiots bankrupted? How many little people have they put out of work by concentrating on profit at the expense of social context? How much damage have they done to the international economy?
It was a Lehman VP who helped put the final nails in the coffin of de-regulation.
I hope they spend some time in the real world, grow up and get proper jobs doing something useful.
i.e. that'll be the day. In the end, might makes right. Nothing has changed since the caveman.
Do you really think those proverbial cleaners and secretaries aren't going to be able find new jobs in a city with millions of businesses?
How about the cleaners and secretaries in the companies which the City has put under over the last twenty five years? Does working outside of Canary Wharf mean they don't get a sympathy vote?
Bah.
I think this has now become a thread hi-jack ! :-)
Not really, no.
You're looking in the wrong place. The temps will move on, the cleaners will be redeployed (as the phrase goes) one way or another.
It's the PAs and IT people who will have a harder time finding new work after this.
And they're a suitable target for Schadenfreude. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Don't knock schadenfreude: It's about the only kind of freude we get these days.
We should laugh now, while we can. We have long predicted this moment, and long known what follows: It does not end with the lay-offs of 4000 drones. The Fates are kind.
The "drones" had it coming, but the ones that won't be out of a job are these people. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Ofxord and Cambridge have research parks.
No one is forced to live or work in London. The UK does have an economy of sorts elsewhere too.
That seems to have been a personal sacrifice too far for too many people.
So - here we are.
Which isn't a bad thing. Gotta put people to work. But I think most of the private-sector stuff is in the South generally and Southeast in particular. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.
In the UK, where the sector's share of GDP rose to 9.4% in 2006, from 5.5% in 2001, City-dominated London received 50% of total foreign investment. Per capita Gross Valued Added rose by between 8% and 9% over the last decade in London while, in all other regions of the UK, it stagnated or fell.
I have more sympathy for the neighborhood financial planner-types, whose jobs actually involve working for normal people, than I do for the ones on the trading floors.
And, yes, GBP45k is a lot of money. Hell, that's an entry-level salary of more than most people will ever see. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Like the Enron critters, many of these people had large portions of their savings in Lehman shares.
I mean, you don't shit where you eat, and--more to the point--you don't eat where you shit.
Much learning to occur in the next few months! The Fates are kind.
Maybe worse. The Fates are kind.
They said they had each lost about $50,000 in cash they had invested in Lehman's now nearly worthless stock. "I'm young enough to bounce back," Ruiz-Mata said optimistically. "Who I really feel for are the people who've been with the company for many, many years, and who've been getting paid much of their compensation in stock. Those folks face losing fortunes."
"I'm young enough to bounce back," Ruiz-Mata said optimistically.
"Who I really feel for are the people who've been with the company for many, many years, and who've been getting paid much of their compensation in stock. Those folks face losing fortunes."
Somebody forgot to tell those unfortunates that working many years for one company and having one's life savings in the company's stock is probably not a good diversification strategy.
Well, none of them could have anticipated that the company would go under. After all, they only worked at an investment firm.
Getting laid off, and seeing your retirement money disappear on the same day: priceless.
But it's a sideshow compared to what I'm talking about above: the brutal destruction of the working lives and useful know-how of far more people over a much longer period. And of course when I attack the financial sector, it's the guys at the top I'm thinking of.
And of course when I attack the financial sector, it's the guys at the top I'm thinking of.
Compared to what I say in the story above, I don't understand this ardent defence of financial sector workers, sorry.
I can't offer a ready-made figure like that for the destruction caused, as I say above, by the return-on-capital requirements of the financial industry over the decades.
Huh? A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Wage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In labor and finance settings, a wage may be defined to include cash paid for some specified quantity (measured in units of time) of labor. Wages may be contrasted with salaries, with wages being paid at a wage rate (based on units of time worked) while salaries are paid periodically without reference to a specified number of hours worked.
The point is that it appears because these 5000 people are not proletarians it's okay that they're losing their jobs. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Personally I'll be happy to see more of the latter go, because if they don't, there will be even more poverty and wealth destruction happening elsewhere regardless.
The big difference between I-banking and most everything else is that the employees get a pretty huge chunk of their value-added. You've got enterprises with relatively low numbers of employees and huge revenues. Add in a highly competitive hiring market and relative ease of starting small new companies in good times and you get big bucks for the workers and a relatively flat salary structure. The only thing that approaches it is the high end legal market. Last I heard, about a year or two ago, going rate for the first salary out of law school was 165K plus bonus. Your typical partner makes about ten times that at most, the top handful of rainmakers maybe forty times. Contrast with the salary structure in most other sectors.
According to Colman's "only meaningful definition", they are working-class or proletarian. I don't mind if one accepts that definition or not. I can see the point in talking about the salaried middle class (considering, with TBG, that the cleaners etc are working for subcontractors, are temps, etc).
But I haven't read anyone here arguing that because people are middle class it's OK they're losing their jobs. I feel no schadenfreude about this, there's nothing joyful in any of it that I can see.
What I disagree with is making this job loss the central point of what's happening. Or, put it this way, it could be discussed in a diary dedicated to it. I feel that what I'm writing about above over-reaches this issue in scope, and over time. What's important, in my view, is the damage done by the financial industry acting as a pump for a new-and-old money plutocracy, since the Thatcher-Reagan years.
