Dollars & Sense: The Dull Compulsion of the Economic (An Ugly Scene)

T.D.C.o.t.E: An Ugly Scene
by Dollars and Sense

The Dull Compulsion of the Economic (xvi)
A series of blog postings by D&S collective member Larry Peterson

An Ugly Scene


This morning I was party to an unpleasant, and rather absurd encounter. I almost always take my morning caffeine injection at a local (Cambridge, MA) establishment, the Crema Cafe, which, unusually, has a relatively long common table. At this table, people unrelated to each other can sit together without feeling Anglo-Saxon anxiety at the idea that they are in the intimate presence of strangers. This morning I settled down at the table virtually alone, when members of a group slowly began congregating around me. As the group gathered, and the conversation developed, it became clear that these were students at Harvard Business School, who were reacquainting themselves after summer recess. All very normal, right?

Well, as I continued to read my newspaper, the conversation centered on the various internships the students had been involved in over the summer. One student did hers in Philadelphia, and another was just back from Moscow. Another, who (on account of his age) may not have been a student, but a teacher, had been traipsing around Amsterdam. All of them seemed to be doing private equity work of some sort.

As I sat there, I became more and more angry. I suppose it was the kid from Moscow who set me off: here he is, coming from a country which has seen its GDP drop by close to 10% in the last year, seemingly interested only in recounting his daily routine: how many hours he worked, what the nightlife was like, that sort of thing. But that's no big deal: it's normal among friends to focus on things like this when they first meet up after a while. Why was I so upset?

My frustration with this question amplified my original annoyance, which was itself exaggerated by what my eyes kept glancing over. I was reading the Sunday New York Times print edition, and I kept looking at an article I posted yesterday on this blog, about how Wall Streeters are developing products to get the elderly to sell their life insurance policies at a loss for a larger up-front sum than they can get from the insurance companies, which would be securitized, a la subprime mortgages, and provide potentially high winnings for investors if the previously-insured died prematurely (the revenue streams would go towards paying the premiums the former holders didn't want to pay anymore). Considering that at least some of the sellers must be selling precisely because they got saddled with mortgages that have gone bad, the whole idea made me sick. But this didn't necessarily have anything to do with those at the table. And I just kept getting angrier. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/blog/2009/09/tdcote-ugly-scene.html