Tuesday, December 20, 2011

I Have Something To Say

About this.

Dear Bankers and Other Assorted Rich Folk,

I think you must have been absent the day they taught this, so allow me to clue you in.

There used to be a time when rich folks like ya'll would just STFU and be rich. You wouldn't whine. You wouldn't brag. You wouldn't moan. You wouldn't thumb your noses at anyone. You would just, quite simply, and very quietly, be rich. You'd silently enjoy your money and the rest of us would only hear from you when you endowed a chair at a university or funded a wing of a hospital or underwrote some vast collection of heretofore obscure art that would draw sellout crowds to a museum for months on end. If any of you deviated from that path, there was usually some Elder Rich Person to explain, patiently but persistently, that whining, bragging, moaning, and thumbing were Simply Not Done.

There were practical reasons for this, the first being that it is, at a bare minimum, unseemly, and leads to all manner of resentment. Alternatively, it could make said resentment escalate to people hating your fucking guts. Which could lead to all manner of unpleasantness beyond mere resentment.

In any case, you need to go back to that.

Seriously. Just go quietly enjoy your money and everyone will leave you alone. Think "stay under the radar", "keep your head down", "lay low", and "be understated" and you'll be fine. Anything else is, well, nouveau riche. You remember the nouveau riche, don't you? Everyone hated them, too, for the simple reason that, like you, they never knew when to STFU. Edith Wharton wrote reams about them. It never ended well.

There are plenty of places in this country where a respectable rich person can just kick back and quietly enjoy their dough. You should find one of those places and take a lesson from the folks there.

Anything else is just an engraved invitation to Occupiers to set up camp on the east patio of your place in East Hampton.

xxx...res

7 comments:

DrDick said...

Have we no tumbrels, no pitchforks, no guillotines?

Montag said...

Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future. Now, where's the girl? I want the only daughter I've got left. As you found out, Evelyn was lost to me a long time ago.
Jake Gittes: Who do you blame for that? Her?
Noah Cross: I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of ANYTHING.


Yeah, but only the rich are certain they can get away with it....

dguzman said...

That's the thing--the bragging and the in-your-face-ness of it all. Is that more because of the 24-hr media circus or the rich people being less STFU? Either way, it's in our faces 24/7 and, like you, I'd rather it not be.

Brooklyn Girl said...

From wiki:

James "Jamie" Dimon was born in New York City, to Theodore and Themis Dimon, of Greek descent and attended Browning School.[5]

He majored in psychology and economics at Tufts University, before earning an M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School along with classmates Jeffrey Immelt, Steve Burke (businessman) and Seth Klarman. When Dimon graduated in 1982, Sandy Weill convinced him to turn down offers from Goldman Sachs,[6] where he worked the previous summer, and Morgan Stanley to join him as an assistant at American Express. Although Weill could not offer the same amount of money as the investment banks, Weill promised Dimon that he would have "fun".[6] Jamie Dimon's father, Theodore Dimon, was an Executive Vice President at American Express. The younger Dimon came to Weill's attention when Theodore passed along an essay that Jamie had written to him.

Yeah. Self-made man. And flaming asshole.

DanF said...

I remember thinking the first (and only) time I watched Robin Leach and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" that, "This has to end badly for the rich."

Anonymous said...

What was that show? The Real Kardasians of 90210?

pansypoo said...

the bourbons never learned, why would the current crop that has been suckled since 1980 change.