The Way We Live Now: stealing everything in sight. Out of necessity, mind you. We're not some common criminals. Common criminals can't get jobs at all. We're uncommon criminals, avenging economics itself, with bold, technically criminal action!

Yes, the rumors that you've heard about us stealing $5 million from Columbia University are true. But really, this is all in service of economic rationality. Do you really think that money will be put to better use by Columbia kids? We took it, and we put it to use on highly profitable inside trading. Which is the model of efficiency, fuckers.

It's hard work out here. Everybody's not lucky enough to get their ass whupped by a cop and start a fashion line with the proceeds. The rest of us here in the real world have to do things like insider trading, or ripping off colleges. Wall Street pay is nice and everything, but in this day and age, you need an edge. Not just the normal edge that we have over poor job seekers with criminal records. And knifelike mathematical edge, that constitutes nothing less than a post-crash model of economics, the holy grail that every smart quant guy or whatever is looking for.

Our working model is "The rich win again."

[Pic via]