There’s been a spate of layoffs at Wall Street trading desks lately, and the talking financial airheads won't shut up about it, so our readers are probably wondering what’s up.
Lets go back a few years and get a handle on this.
Our mob connection had close matrimonial ties to our mother, who was a Saint. At the nadir of the Great Depression, he and his sister were the only two employees on the 19th floor of the Filch & Finagle Building at 14 ½ Wall, and she was getting paid out of his salary. It was either that, or move in with the Saint, and nobody wanted to go there, believe me. Whew. Anyway, the 19th floor was the F&F back office, and there were so few trades, our mob connection processed them himself, walking certificates back and forth to the back offices of firms they were doing business with as well. Most days he worked a handful of trades. Some days there were none. This in a space that housed two hundred employees in the best of times.
In the depths, Filch & Finagle only had one trader, the Consigliore. There was nothing for anybody else to do. He traded with the other Consigliores, who didn’t need anyone else either because they were only trading with each other too. Then business picked up, and the son-in-law got hired back, and there were two traders at Filch & Finagle, and the son-in-law traded with the other sons-in-law because everybody on the Street needed a son-in-law to trade with the other sons-in-law now, and soon business started to grow a little more.
Real handsome types have no problem getting hired on Wall Street. I don’t know if it’s a gay thing, or what, but financial insiders have reason to think that financial meltdowns occur because too many financiers are looking at themselves in the mirror instead of reading their financials like financial players should. Anyway the second round of hirings at the trading desk is always the guy who’d be the Consigliore’s gay lover if the Consigliore were gay, and all the firms on the street hire them next so they can handle phone calls with one another like the son-in-laws are doing.
Thing is, at Filch & Finagle, the Consigliore was still calling all the shots. By himself, he’d place the one round of orders with his counterparts. With the son-in-law in tow, he’d add the exact same transaction, but to be done with all the other sons-in-laws this time. And once the absolutely exquisite facial lines climbed on board, they’d add a third layer of the very same thing, so he could do whatever it was with all the other new absolutely exquisite facial lines in the rackets.
People think that Wall Street trading is quite the occupation, glamorous and teeming with excitement, especially since one of the guys is so good-looking, but all these crew soldiers do is take and then place orders, and try to remember what orders they’re supposed to be placing over the course of maybe 20 phone calls, except for the fabulously contoured chin, and one of the other traders just keeps reminding him about what’s going on, so he keeps up too.
The fourth trader is always a nephew, then neighbor’s sons get in, and finally they hit the Ivy Leaguers, who are the last hired and first fired because they’re Ivy Leaguers and entitled, but haven’t worked through the entitled part yet, and don‘t see sons-in-laws, pretty boys, nephews and neighbors in there too.
Thing is, all this new business comes from you and me because big money swindles can’t work unless swindlers have some big money to swindle, and collectively we've got big money until they swindle it from us, and the number of trading levels they need depends on how much of our big money we’re willing to let them swindle at any given point in the upcoming stock market meltdown. So when we pull back, their business slacks off, and the layoffs start, in reverse order, of course.
Right now, they’re just handing some Ivy Leaguers pink slips, and there are plenty more Ivy Leaguers to go, so the Street is nowhere near getting rid of any of the neighbor’s sons yet, let alone nephews, potential movie stars, or the sons-ins-laws, so we wouldn’t worry about the recent firings at all.
Unless you’re down there because you went to the wrong dang school, I suppose.
