12 ms·

I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society

323 points by siromoney 13y ago

mrspeaker 13y ago
Comments on these kind of articles on Hacker News are always more defensive than I'd imagine. I think we have a weird mix of people where 50% are "hackers of computers" who'd do this shit for free, and will be doing it until they die and 50% are "hackers of society" who are here because they see an opportunity to make it to "big time" without having to have the right parents/schools etc. It's strange how most of the time the two groups get along so well!
- NhanH 13y ago
  Because we could have 80% of one group, and 60% of another group as well - the two groups are not mutually exclusive.
- te_chris 13y ago
  You're giving the audience here too much credit that they're actually hackers. On most articles like this it just feels like a bunch of doe-eyed, aspirational men who really want to be rich one day, so don't want to spoil the fun for their future selves. Tangentially, this is what struck me about visiting America. We went to Hearst castle and the reverence which the guides and the people on the tour paid to the ghost and myth of Hearst was unnerving. Explains a lot about how wall st gets away with stuff though.
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    I get that feeling as well. There seem to be a lot of people responding to these types of articles who have 'stars in their eyes' and think that they'll be able to join the 'old boys club' if they just work hard enough, or get lucky enough (though some also seem to deny that luck has anything to do with success which baffles me). The reverence for the wealthy in America really is a whole other weird thing. America doesn't have the history (in time span) to really have many historical heros other than those who were wealthy enough to 'do things' so we have to make due with what we've got. That is not to say that a great deal of any given place's heros of the past were not also wealthy in their time though.
    - blumkvist 13y ago
      Luck? Luck is invented to be an excuse for the feeble minded. There is no luck involved in getting rich. If you want to get rich you have to 1) work hard 2) be smart 3) be unscrupulous. The 3rd dependency is often misunderstood and the results of it are attributed to "luck".
      - tragic 13y ago
        Yes, Paris Hilton had to put in a lot of hard, astute and unscrupulous work to get those parents of hers. In a past life, presumably.
        blumkvist 13y ago
        Your comment just proves my point - people refuse to face the reality and would rather come up with excuses, exceptions and other self-deceptions, than admit they don't have what it takes. And for the record, Paris Hilton did not get rich. She was born rich.
        druiid 13y ago
        So she was born rich. You might even say... she was born lucky.
        blumkvist 13y ago
        She was fortunate, not lucky. Luck is the (favorable) interconnecting of previously unrelated happenings. People use it instead of "chance". The thing is, you can improve your chances with your actions, thus improve your "luck". The majority of people though, conveniently believe that luck is what happens to you, and some people are just "lucky" and things happen for them. That may be true for a very small number of people (who won the lottery), the rest of the "lucky" bunch were fortunate because of outside factors, or stacked the deck in their favor.
        13y ago
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  >Comments on these kind of articles on Hacker News are always more defensive than I'd imagine. We're all just temporarily embarrassed billionaires.
  - gph 13y ago
    Not me, I'm a temporarily embarrassed trillionaire. I wouldn't be caught dead with these plebillionaires.
    - ForHackernews 13y ago
      http://www.amazon.com/Trillionaire-Next-Door-Investors-Trading/dp/0066620767 http://www.amazon.com/Trillionaire-Next-Door-Investors-Tradi...
ballerindustry 13y ago
I don't really see the problem with them telling insensitive jokes and acting like idiots in their time off. How they act at work is more important. Pretty stupid article.
- pille 13y ago
  We already know their behavior at work is pretty terrible. The article just highlights that, deep down, they're not actually great guys once you get to know them.
teddyh 13y ago
Original title, and current headline: 1% Jokes and Plutocrats In Drag: What I Saw When I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society
siromoney 13y ago
I didn't crash the Wall Street secret society :) the article is adapted from Kevin Roose’s book Young Money
rjtavares 13y ago
So people who rule Wall Street are sexist and homophobic. I'm surprised... that some of those things seemed actually funny (a parody of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” called “Bailout King" has to be funny). On a more serious note: congrats on the reporter for having the balls to crash that party. Most things were expected, and properly offensive. But I don't understand the shock at finance themed parody songs.
Cless 13y ago
The plutocrats are right. Of course they are being persecuted. I guess that's what happens when you have done everything in your power to redistribute wealth from the bottom to the top. But then again, trickle-down economics has worked wonders for society.
quanticle 13y ago
The problem isn't with the wealthy. Wealthy and powerful people have been behaving badly behind closed doors since at least the Roman Empire, and probably before then as well. The problem is with us. Why don't we hold them accountable for their misdeeds? Why do we buy into their rhetoric that they are the job creators? Why do we give equal time to their views that they are being persecuted like Jews during Kristallnacht, when the events of the last few years have show that, if anything the opposite is true? I think articles like this, honestly, are a disservice. They're comfortable. They're easy. They put the blame on the wealthy -- "Oh look, those billionaires and plutocrats are at it again!" -- without asking the real question: what systemic changes can we work towards today to ensure that people like Vikram Pandit, Dick Fuld and Jimmy Cayne can't wreak the same kind of havoc that they did in 2007? What can we do to ensure that people appreciate the impact that obscure financial regulations have on their everyday lives?
- RodericDay 13y ago
  It's funny, I think exactly the opposite of this. Something along the lines about how a sham democracy is worse than no democracy at all, because people keep blaming themselves although they are being oppressed by plutocrats in ways not really unlike violent threats in terms of control. Instead of being starved, the threat is to get fired. Instead of lack of education, people are blasted with advertisement. I think to say that the fault is "within us" is a platitude about as banal as "the answer is somewhere in the middle".
  - quanticle 13y ago
    Our founders said that the legitimacy of government comes from the consent of the governed. Vox populi est vox dei. So why do we continue to consent to a government that sets up an economic system that ensures that plutocrats can behave badly and get away with it? I'm talking about cases like Dick Fuld, where he drove his firm into bankruptcy, nearly upended the entire American investment banking system, and still walked away with millions upon millions of dollars. I'm talking about cases like Jon Corzine's, where there was outright fraud -- M. F. Global was mixing its own proprietary money with its customers', which is fraudulent -- and nobody went to jail. I'm not even talking about solutions. I think talking about solutions is entirely premature at this point. We haven't even identified the problem yet. Why do a significant fraction of Americans vote against their own economic best interests, even when they know that their vote is harming them?
yuhong 13y ago
There was a HN thread that suggested that Eric Schmidt be fired after the anti poaching scandal.
carlob 13y ago
This reminds me of the Simpsons' Republican party headquarters.
- snorkel 13y ago
  Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down? We doooo! We doooo!
mercurialshark 13y ago
I really hope this guys 1% reference is metaphorical. You can be in the 1% and not be able to afford a weekend stay at the St. Regis. But you wouldn't expect accuracy from a guy who appears genuinely surprised that financial executives have a club. Guess what? Sometimes, they play golf and tennis together too. Someone alert the SEC...
- GFischer 13y ago
  "You can be in the 1% and not be able to afford a weekend stay at the St. Regis" I think you're seriously underestimating the wealth of the 1%: "The 1 percent threshold for net worth in the Fed data was nearly $8.4 million" So basically, everyone in the 1% has 10 million or more. I doubt a weekend stay at the St. Regis makes a significant dent. Source: economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/measuring-the-top-1-by-wealth-not-income/ www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/business/the-1-percent-paint-a-more-nuanced-portrait-of-the-rich.html
  - rbcgerard 13y ago
    haha - you should probably read the articles you reference: "Some readers wondered if the 1 percent by wealth weren’t an entirely different group of people from the 1 percent by income. But there is substantial overlap: the Fed data suggests that about half of the top 1 percent of earners are also among the top 1 percent in the net worth category."
    - GFischer 13y ago
      So the grandparent poster is not in the 1% of wealth, but might be in the 1% of earners :) . When I think of the 1%, I think of the former, but I guess many are referencing the latter. In any case, I am neither :P
yummyfajitas 13y ago
I found this the most telling part of the article: The second thing I realized was that Kappa Beta Phi was, in large part, a fear-based organization. Here were executives who had strong ideas about politics, society, and the work of their colleagues, but who would never have the courage to voice those opinions in a public setting. Based on the few I've met, these sorts of people aren't exactly shrinking violets. Yet they live in fear that the rest of society will learn their opinions and that bad things will come of it. Back in the tech world, it makes me think of the attacks on Pax Dickinson and Paul Graham. No matter how rich, powerful and competent you are, you live in fear of the opinion makers accusing you of sexism/homophobia/insensitivity/etc. Definitely makes it clear where the real power lies in our society.
- pille 13y ago
  > Definitely makes it clear where the real power lies in our society. It does? I don't think the logic follows. Just because Wall Streeters are paranoid and sensitive about their public image doesn't mean they are not invincible. This will hardly be a blip in the news, because of apathy, and because anyone who would be mad about Wall Street guys acting like this is already mad and can't do anything about it anyway. I don't think a few more Rachel Maddow rants are really going to bring the system crashing down.
- FLUX-YOU 13y ago
  For a fearful society, they certainly had lax security.
- NPC82 13y ago
  I think it's only potential power. People have to organise to realize that power into fruition and in the US that's a whole can of worms. This is great proof of concept.
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  To be fair, Pax Dickinson really is a giant, bigoted asshole.
jackgavigan 13y ago
So it turns out that the wealthy and powerful are just like the rest of us - they like getting together in private with their friends to have raucous, alcohol-fuelled fun, and tell politically-incorrect jokes to one another. I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you! It's just as well we don't live in a glass house! It would be pretty embarrassing if tech industry people were to spend millions on, say a lavish, LotR-themed wedding. Or if our awards ceremonies attracted protesters.
- yoha 13y ago
  I have to agree with this. All the article have shown is that even billionaires are people. The fact that they make intolerant jokes or that they speak of the crisis lightly is not that shocking considering the fact that they are in a private context. From what I understood, they are here to relax, and that is actually quite similar to what you could witness in any conventional meeting in a more modest population. It would have been way more shocking if it had been done in public speech. Not because it would have been known, but because it does not convey the same meaning. In a private context, you can expect people to know you are joking, or that this is a personal opinion you are able not to impose to others. In a public context, you are expected to express yourself clearly and to take position. In regards to the conclusion of the sting, I can also understand that they would not like that kind of material to be published. Imagine someone threatening to publish recordings of you in shameful situations during a party? From what I read, they were reasonable they seem to have let him go without much trouble (I think they could have called the police and have his phone confiscated without too much hassle).
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    Agreed they are just people. The difference in this case being that they are being insensitive (even celebrating) about something they did which had negative nation wide (world wide) implications. Which is slightly different than the average person's drunken antics at a party. For a different (arguably larger) example, if someone is making light of (or celebrating) genocide/slavery/some atrocity (that they or their compatriots caused) and it comes out, that is very different than pictures of Obama/Zuckerberg/Guy down the street being blackout drunk or even doing drugs at a party.
spindritf 13y ago
Someone told a homophobic joke, that's it? @GSElevator[1] does more hard-hitting reporting. If we're going to be upvoting TMZ-style articles, they could at least be properly scandalous. [1] https://twitter.com/GSElevator https://twitter.com/GSElevator
jrockway 13y ago
I'm tired of hearing the term "the 1%" used for stuff like this. The 1% is 3,000,000 Americans. I've seen income figures for that demographic ranging between $160,000 and $500,000 a year. The lower end is pretty much in reach of any professional working in New York or San Francisco with more than a few years of experience. (This is total compensation, 401k matching, stock, etc.) All this tells you is that the population mostly lives in expensive areas; rent in New York City can be 10x higher than elsewhere in the US. I'll tell you as someone around that income range in New York... I don't get invited to parties where we discuss how to screw over the working man. I ride my bike to work, spend half the day there, ride my bike around Brooklyn, watch some TV on a 720p LCD that I bought 6 or 7 years ago, and then go to bed in my bedroom that's too small to actually contain a bed. (The mattress fits.) Admittedly, I've accumulated some savings this way, but still, New York is really fucking expensive, and it's not hard to spend make what sounds like a lot of money on ordinary things like food and shelter in non-premium neighborhoods.
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  Everyone who uses that realizes that the term is a mental shortcut. "One percent" rolls easier of the tongue than "one pertrille". Please don't take it personal, nobody's talking about you. :)
- GFischer 13y ago
  According to this, they also have 10 million in wealth, not only the 160.000 a year. You're probably not in the 1%: "The 1 percent threshold for net worth in the Fed data was nearly $8.4 million" Source: economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/measuring-the-top-1-by-wealth-not-income/ www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/business/the-1-percent-paint-a-more-nuanced-portrait-of-the-rich.html
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    That's a convenient (at least for the young, upper-income HN demographic) but ahistorical definition. The use of "top 1%" in political rhetoric goes back at least to Al Gore's 2000 campaign for president, as a cudgel against George W. Bush's proposed tax cuts. Gore is quite clear in his October 17 debate that he's talking about income when he speaks of the $330,000 (household) earnings cutoff to be in the 1%[1]. It continued to be a common refrain against upper bracket tax reductions for a decade, and it was still being used in that sense by politicians and activists at the time it graduated into the slogans of Occupy Wall Street. [1] http://www.debates.org/?page=october-17-2000-debate-transcript http://www.debates.org/?page=october-17-2000-debate-transcri...
Cowicide 13y ago
Megalomaniacs are also sociopaths. Who knew?
tomp 13y ago
> The jokes ranged from unfunny and sexist (Q: “What’s the biggest difference between Hillary Clinton and a catfish?” A: “One has whiskers and stinks, and the other is a fish”) to unfunny and homophobic (Q: “What’s the biggest difference between Barney Frank and a Fenway Frank?” A: “Barney Frank comes in different-size buns”). We've got jokes about policeman, about blondes, about the French, about mostly everybody... So, if the target of a joke is a woman, it doesn't mean that it's a sexist joke, and a joke about being gay isn't a homophobic joke. If anything, making fun of something means accepting is as normal, as part of everyday life!
netcan 13y ago
In many ways we are politically a primitive society. Technology evolves faster than culture. We are still (and this is especially evident on HN) thinking in mid 20th century paradigms, remnants of half dead ideologies and long dead political maneuvering. Just because these ideas have evolved over time does not mean they are not half baked. That doesn't stop people from treating them like a matter of personal identity. The "Left" believes extreme wealth will inevitably corrupt the political process. It's naive to think that billionaires will not use their money to buy power and more wealth. The "Right" thinks that the state will inevitably corrupt business and/or be corrupted by wealth. It's naive to think that bureaucrats with a rubber stamps that adds a zero to the value of land or a semi legitimate patent into an 8 figure asset asset will not be corrupted by wealth. They call it regulatory capture. IMO both these views, if we call them views are impoverished. They rely on economic and political narratives that have "capital" & "labour" as their basis. They are based on the idea that trade between Moscow & Vladivostok is different to trade between Moscow & Milan. We're always looking for ways to address power & money and their role in our world. We're still not there.
junto 13y ago
I'll just leave this here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_o... This isn't new and it is unlikely to change unless Tyler Durden comes along.
etanazir 13y ago
The rhetoric is competition; the reality a cabal.
zacinbusiness 13y ago
I don't think any of the antics of these guys should be a surprise. I mean they are all at the top of the finance ladder, and you don't get there without being a psychopath.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
swalsh 13y ago
I'd bet the articles he would have gotten from these people as trusted sources would have been exponentially better than this piece. This is just a bunch of guys hanging out with the only group of people who understand their pressures. There's no conspiracy here, there's no "great insight" to be had. I'm angry I wasted my time reading the article.
- scrumper 13y ago
  My thoughts exactly. In the excitement of being caught gatecrashing a pretty exclusive party, I get the feeling the author rushed to write what must have felt like an exclusive, bring-the-system-down exposé. Instead, we got a mildly diverting piece that confirms our suspicions about how the rich and powerful behave behind closed doors, and the author blew a career-making opportunity for inside access. It's a shame, because there's definitely a story to be told about these people involving the 2008 crisis and the enormous drain on the public purse that the bailout caused. That story is surely more juicy than 'the rich think the rest of us are suckers for rescuing them.'
bhousel 13y ago
Can someone in the wall street secret society plz send me an invite? Email is in my HN profile, kthx.
- snorkel 13y ago
  No invite needed. You can just walk right in! Although they'll probably be checking invites and ids next time.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Main takeaway: these guys aren't evil in the Sith Lord sense, but they're also completely not up to leadership. Rather than being cosmically evil, they're just a bit dumb, a bit insensitive, and a bit sad. Reality, for them, is emasculating and disempowering, but also humanizing.
winn-dixie 13y ago
Why did he wait two years to publish this article? Did he (attempt to) take advantage of what was revealed before publishing?
taivare 13y ago
I don't believe the Wall Street bankers of the ' Greatest Generation' would have displayed such crass, even in private. This new breed far less class, far less men, far less respect for the countries citizens.

323 points by siromoney 13y ago

Comments on these kind of articles on Hacker News are always more defensive than I'd imagine. I think we have a weird mix of people where 50% are "hackers of computers" who'd do this shit for free, and will be doing it until they die and 50% are "hackers of society" who are here because they see an opportunity to make it to "big time" without having to have the right parents/schools etc. It's strange how most of the time the two groups get along so well!

NhanH 13y ago
Because we could have 80% of one group, and 60% of another group as well - the two groups are not mutually exclusive.
te_chris 13y ago
You're giving the audience here too much credit that they're actually hackers. On most articles like this it just feels like a bunch of doe-eyed, aspirational men who really want to be rich one day, so don't want to spoil the fun for their future selves. Tangentially, this is what struck me about visiting America. We went to Hearst castle and the reverence which the guides and the people on the tour paid to the ghost and myth of Hearst was unnerving. Explains a lot about how wall st gets away with stuff though.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  I get that feeling as well. There seem to be a lot of people responding to these types of articles who have 'stars in their eyes' and think that they'll be able to join the 'old boys club' if they just work hard enough, or get lucky enough (though some also seem to deny that luck has anything to do with success which baffles me). The reverence for the wealthy in America really is a whole other weird thing. America doesn't have the history (in time span) to really have many historical heros other than those who were wealthy enough to 'do things' so we have to make due with what we've got. That is not to say that a great deal of any given place's heros of the past were not also wealthy in their time though.
  - blumkvist 13y ago
    Luck? Luck is invented to be an excuse for the feeble minded. There is no luck involved in getting rich. If you want to get rich you have to 1) work hard 2) be smart 3) be unscrupulous. The 3rd dependency is often misunderstood and the results of it are attributed to "luck".
    - tragic 13y ago
      Yes, Paris Hilton had to put in a lot of hard, astute and unscrupulous work to get those parents of hers. In a past life, presumably.
      - blumkvist 13y ago
        Your comment just proves my point - people refuse to face the reality and would rather come up with excuses, exceptions and other self-deceptions, than admit they don't have what it takes. And for the record, Paris Hilton did not get rich. She was born rich.
        druiid 13y ago
        So she was born rich. You might even say... she was born lucky.
        blumkvist 13y ago
        She was fortunate, not lucky. Luck is the (favorable) interconnecting of previously unrelated happenings. People use it instead of "chance". The thing is, you can improve your chances with your actions, thus improve your "luck". The majority of people though, conveniently believe that luck is what happens to you, and some people are just "lucky" and things happen for them. That may be true for a very small number of people (who won the lottery), the rest of the "lucky" bunch were fortunate because of outside factors, or stacked the deck in their favor.
        13y ago
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
>Comments on these kind of articles on Hacker News are always more defensive than I'd imagine. We're all just temporarily embarrassed billionaires.
- gph 13y ago
  Not me, I'm a temporarily embarrassed trillionaire. I wouldn't be caught dead with these plebillionaires.
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    http://www.amazon.com/Trillionaire-Next-Door-Investors-Trading/dp/0066620767 http://www.amazon.com/Trillionaire-Next-Door-Investors-Tradi...

ballerindustry 13y ago

I don't really see the problem with them telling insensitive jokes and acting like idiots in their time off. How they act at work is more important. Pretty stupid article.

pille 13y ago
We already know their behavior at work is pretty terrible. The article just highlights that, deep down, they're not actually great guys once you get to know them.

teddyh 13y ago

Original title, and current headline: 1% Jokes and Plutocrats In Drag: What I Saw When I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society

siromoney 13y ago

I didn't crash the Wall Street secret society :) the article is adapted from Kevin Roose’s book Young Money

rjtavares 13y ago

So people who rule Wall Street are sexist and homophobic. I'm surprised... that some of those things seemed actually funny (a parody of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” called “Bailout King" has to be funny). On a more serious note: congrats on the reporter for having the balls to crash that party. Most things were expected, and properly offensive. But I don't understand the shock at finance themed parody songs.

Cless 13y ago

The plutocrats are right. Of course they are being persecuted. I guess that's what happens when you have done everything in your power to redistribute wealth from the bottom to the top. But then again, trickle-down economics has worked wonders for society.

quanticle 13y ago

The problem isn't with the wealthy. Wealthy and powerful people have been behaving badly behind closed doors since at least the Roman Empire, and probably before then as well. The problem is with us. Why don't we hold them accountable for their misdeeds? Why do we buy into their rhetoric that they are the job creators? Why do we give equal time to their views that they are being persecuted like Jews during Kristallnacht, when the events of the last few years have show that, if anything the opposite is true? I think articles like this, honestly, are a disservice. They're comfortable. They're easy. They put the blame on the wealthy -- "Oh look, those billionaires and plutocrats are at it again!" -- without asking the real question: what systemic changes can we work towards today to ensure that people like Vikram Pandit, Dick Fuld and Jimmy Cayne can't wreak the same kind of havoc that they did in 2007? What can we do to ensure that people appreciate the impact that obscure financial regulations have on their everyday lives?

RodericDay 13y ago
It's funny, I think exactly the opposite of this. Something along the lines about how a sham democracy is worse than no democracy at all, because people keep blaming themselves although they are being oppressed by plutocrats in ways not really unlike violent threats in terms of control. Instead of being starved, the threat is to get fired. Instead of lack of education, people are blasted with advertisement. I think to say that the fault is "within us" is a platitude about as banal as "the answer is somewhere in the middle".
- quanticle 13y ago
  Our founders said that the legitimacy of government comes from the consent of the governed. Vox populi est vox dei. So why do we continue to consent to a government that sets up an economic system that ensures that plutocrats can behave badly and get away with it? I'm talking about cases like Dick Fuld, where he drove his firm into bankruptcy, nearly upended the entire American investment banking system, and still walked away with millions upon millions of dollars. I'm talking about cases like Jon Corzine's, where there was outright fraud -- M. F. Global was mixing its own proprietary money with its customers', which is fraudulent -- and nobody went to jail. I'm not even talking about solutions. I think talking about solutions is entirely premature at this point. We haven't even identified the problem yet. Why do a significant fraction of Americans vote against their own economic best interests, even when they know that their vote is harming them?

yuhong 13y ago

There was a HN thread that suggested that Eric Schmidt be fired after the anti poaching scandal.

carlob 13y ago

This reminds me of the Simpsons' Republican party headquarters.

snorkel 13y ago
Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down? We doooo! We doooo!

mercurialshark 13y ago

I really hope this guys 1% reference is metaphorical. You can be in the 1% and not be able to afford a weekend stay at the St. Regis. But you wouldn't expect accuracy from a guy who appears genuinely surprised that financial executives have a club. Guess what? Sometimes, they play golf and tennis together too. Someone alert the SEC...

GFischer 13y ago
"You can be in the 1% and not be able to afford a weekend stay at the St. Regis" I think you're seriously underestimating the wealth of the 1%: "The 1 percent threshold for net worth in the Fed data was nearly $8.4 million" So basically, everyone in the 1% has 10 million or more. I doubt a weekend stay at the St. Regis makes a significant dent. Source: economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/measuring-the-top-1-by-wealth-not-income/ www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/business/the-1-percent-paint-a-more-nuanced-portrait-of-the-rich.html
- rbcgerard 13y ago
  haha - you should probably read the articles you reference: "Some readers wondered if the 1 percent by wealth weren’t an entirely different group of people from the 1 percent by income. But there is substantial overlap: the Fed data suggests that about half of the top 1 percent of earners are also among the top 1 percent in the net worth category."
  - GFischer 13y ago
    So the grandparent poster is not in the 1% of wealth, but might be in the 1% of earners :) . When I think of the 1%, I think of the former, but I guess many are referencing the latter. In any case, I am neither :P

yummyfajitas 13y ago

I found this the most telling part of the article: The second thing I realized was that Kappa Beta Phi was, in large part, a fear-based organization. Here were executives who had strong ideas about politics, society, and the work of their colleagues, but who would never have the courage to voice those opinions in a public setting. Based on the few I've met, these sorts of people aren't exactly shrinking violets. Yet they live in fear that the rest of society will learn their opinions and that bad things will come of it. Back in the tech world, it makes me think of the attacks on Pax Dickinson and Paul Graham. No matter how rich, powerful and competent you are, you live in fear of the opinion makers accusing you of sexism/homophobia/insensitivity/etc. Definitely makes it clear where the real power lies in our society.

pille 13y ago
> Definitely makes it clear where the real power lies in our society. It does? I don't think the logic follows. Just because Wall Streeters are paranoid and sensitive about their public image doesn't mean they are not invincible. This will hardly be a blip in the news, because of apathy, and because anyone who would be mad about Wall Street guys acting like this is already mad and can't do anything about it anyway. I don't think a few more Rachel Maddow rants are really going to bring the system crashing down.
FLUX-YOU 13y ago
For a fearful society, they certainly had lax security.
NPC82 13y ago
I think it's only potential power. People have to organise to realize that power into fruition and in the US that's a whole can of worms. This is great proof of concept.
ForHackernews 13y ago
To be fair, Pax Dickinson really is a giant, bigoted asshole.

jackgavigan 13y ago

So it turns out that the wealthy and powerful are just like the rest of us - they like getting together in private with their friends to have raucous, alcohol-fuelled fun, and tell politically-incorrect jokes to one another. I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you! It's just as well we don't live in a glass house! It would be pretty embarrassing if tech industry people were to spend millions on, say a lavish, LotR-themed wedding. Or if our awards ceremonies attracted protesters.

yoha 13y ago
I have to agree with this. All the article have shown is that even billionaires are people. The fact that they make intolerant jokes or that they speak of the crisis lightly is not that shocking considering the fact that they are in a private context. From what I understood, they are here to relax, and that is actually quite similar to what you could witness in any conventional meeting in a more modest population. It would have been way more shocking if it had been done in public speech. Not because it would have been known, but because it does not convey the same meaning. In a private context, you can expect people to know you are joking, or that this is a personal opinion you are able not to impose to others. In a public context, you are expected to express yourself clearly and to take position. In regards to the conclusion of the sting, I can also understand that they would not like that kind of material to be published. Imagine someone threatening to publish recordings of you in shameful situations during a party? From what I read, they were reasonable they seem to have let him go without much trouble (I think they could have called the police and have his phone confiscated without too much hassle).
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  Agreed they are just people. The difference in this case being that they are being insensitive (even celebrating) about something they did which had negative nation wide (world wide) implications. Which is slightly different than the average person's drunken antics at a party. For a different (arguably larger) example, if someone is making light of (or celebrating) genocide/slavery/some atrocity (that they or their compatriots caused) and it comes out, that is very different than pictures of Obama/Zuckerberg/Guy down the street being blackout drunk or even doing drugs at a party.

spindritf 13y ago

Someone told a homophobic joke, that's it? @GSElevator[1] does more hard-hitting reporting. If we're going to be upvoting TMZ-style articles, they could at least be properly scandalous. [1] https://twitter.com/GSElevator https://twitter.com/GSElevator

jrockway 13y ago

I'm tired of hearing the term "the 1%" used for stuff like this. The 1% is 3,000,000 Americans. I've seen income figures for that demographic ranging between $160,000 and $500,000 a year. The lower end is pretty much in reach of any professional working in New York or San Francisco with more than a few years of experience. (This is total compensation, 401k matching, stock, etc.) All this tells you is that the population mostly lives in expensive areas; rent in New York City can be 10x higher than elsewhere in the US. I'll tell you as someone around that income range in New York... I don't get invited to parties where we discuss how to screw over the working man. I ride my bike to work, spend half the day there, ride my bike around Brooklyn, watch some TV on a 720p LCD that I bought 6 or 7 years ago, and then go to bed in my bedroom that's too small to actually contain a bed. (The mattress fits.) Admittedly, I've accumulated some savings this way, but still, New York is really fucking expensive, and it's not hard to spend make what sounds like a lot of money on ordinary things like food and shelter in non-premium neighborhoods.

Mithaldu 13y ago
Everyone who uses that realizes that the term is a mental shortcut. "One percent" rolls easier of the tongue than "one pertrille". Please don't take it personal, nobody's talking about you. :)
GFischer 13y ago
According to this, they also have 10 million in wealth, not only the 160.000 a year. You're probably not in the 1%: "The 1 percent threshold for net worth in the Fed data was nearly $8.4 million" Source: economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/measuring-the-top-1-by-wealth-not-income/ www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/business/the-1-percent-paint-a-more-nuanced-portrait-of-the-rich.html
- twoodfin 13y ago
  That's a convenient (at least for the young, upper-income HN demographic) but ahistorical definition. The use of "top 1%" in political rhetoric goes back at least to Al Gore's 2000 campaign for president, as a cudgel against George W. Bush's proposed tax cuts. Gore is quite clear in his October 17 debate that he's talking about income when he speaks of the $330,000 (household) earnings cutoff to be in the 1%[1]. It continued to be a common refrain against upper bracket tax reductions for a decade, and it was still being used in that sense by politicians and activists at the time it graduated into the slogans of Occupy Wall Street. [1] http://www.debates.org/?page=october-17-2000-debate-transcript http://www.debates.org/?page=october-17-2000-debate-transcri...

Cowicide 13y ago

Megalomaniacs are also sociopaths. Who knew?

tomp 13y ago

> The jokes ranged from unfunny and sexist (Q: “What’s the biggest difference between Hillary Clinton and a catfish?” A: “One has whiskers and stinks, and the other is a fish”) to unfunny and homophobic (Q: “What’s the biggest difference between Barney Frank and a Fenway Frank?” A: “Barney Frank comes in different-size buns”). We've got jokes about policeman, about blondes, about the French, about mostly everybody... So, if the target of a joke is a woman, it doesn't mean that it's a sexist joke, and a joke about being gay isn't a homophobic joke. If anything, making fun of something means accepting is as normal, as part of everyday life!

netcan 13y ago

In many ways we are politically a primitive society. Technology evolves faster than culture. We are still (and this is especially evident on HN) thinking in mid 20th century paradigms, remnants of half dead ideologies and long dead political maneuvering. Just because these ideas have evolved over time does not mean they are not half baked. That doesn't stop people from treating them like a matter of personal identity. The "Left" believes extreme wealth will inevitably corrupt the political process. It's naive to think that billionaires will not use their money to buy power and more wealth. The "Right" thinks that the state will inevitably corrupt business and/or be corrupted by wealth. It's naive to think that bureaucrats with a rubber stamps that adds a zero to the value of land or a semi legitimate patent into an 8 figure asset asset will not be corrupted by wealth. They call it regulatory capture. IMO both these views, if we call them views are impoverished. They rely on economic and political narratives that have "capital" & "labour" as their basis. They are based on the idea that trade between Moscow & Vladivostok is different to trade between Moscow & Milan. We're always looking for ways to address power & money and their role in our world. We're still not there.

junto 13y ago

I'll just leave this here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_o... This isn't new and it is unlikely to change unless Tyler Durden comes along.

etanazir 13y ago

The rhetoric is competition; the reality a cabal.

zacinbusiness 13y ago

I don't think any of the antics of these guys should be a surprise. I mean they are all at the top of the finance ladder, and you don't get there without being a psychopath.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

swalsh 13y ago

I'd bet the articles he would have gotten from these people as trusted sources would have been exponentially better than this piece. This is just a bunch of guys hanging out with the only group of people who understand their pressures. There's no conspiracy here, there's no "great insight" to be had. I'm angry I wasted my time reading the article.

scrumper 13y ago
My thoughts exactly. In the excitement of being caught gatecrashing a pretty exclusive party, I get the feeling the author rushed to write what must have felt like an exclusive, bring-the-system-down exposé. Instead, we got a mildly diverting piece that confirms our suspicions about how the rich and powerful behave behind closed doors, and the author blew a career-making opportunity for inside access. It's a shame, because there's definitely a story to be told about these people involving the 2008 crisis and the enormous drain on the public purse that the bailout caused. That story is surely more juicy than 'the rich think the rest of us are suckers for rescuing them.'

bhousel 13y ago

Can someone in the wall street secret society plz send me an invite? Email is in my HN profile, kthx.

snorkel 13y ago
No invite needed. You can just walk right in! Although they'll probably be checking invites and ids next time.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Main takeaway: these guys aren't evil in the Sith Lord sense, but they're also completely not up to leadership. Rather than being cosmically evil, they're just a bit dumb, a bit insensitive, and a bit sad. Reality, for them, is emasculating and disempowering, but also humanizing.

winn-dixie 13y ago

Why did he wait two years to publish this article? Did he (attempt to) take advantage of what was revealed before publishing?

taivare 13y ago

I don't believe the Wall Street bankers of the ' Greatest Generation' would have displayed such crass, even in private. This new breed far less class, far less men, far less respect for the countries citizens.