The Five Best Quotes in Bloomberg's Outrageous Banker Bonuses Story
Bloomberg's Max Abelson, who's carved out a fantastic beat providing Wall Street types with lengths of hangman's rope, has another fantastic story today, this time about the tragic lives of bankers dealing with smaller bonus checks. (Spoiler alert: some of them have to do their dishes by hand.)
It's a harrowing tale of discounted salmon and supermarket circulars, and you can and should read the whole thing to understand exactly why we need to set about one-fifth of New York City on fire. But just to give you a taste of the rage you will feel, here are five of our favorite moments:
5.
[Law professor M. Todd Henderson] wrote two years ago that his family was "just getting by" on more than $250,000 a year [...] "Yes, terminal diseases are worse than getting the flu," he said. "But you suffer when you get the flu."
4.
"They have a circular that they leave in front of the buildings in our neighborhood," said [Wall Street headhunter Daniel] Arbeeny, 49 [...] "We sit there, and I look through all of them to find out where it's worth going."
3.
"I can't imagine what I'm going to do," [Marketing Director Andrew] Schiff said. "I'm crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don't have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand."
2.
Arbeeny said his "income has gone down tremendously." On a recent Sunday, he drove to Fairway Market in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn to buy discounted salmon for $5.99 a pound.
1.
"People who don't have money don't understand the stress," said Alan Dlugash, apartner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy.
Seriously. We've said it before: give Max Abelson a Pulitzer.