Friday, March 2, 2012

Things Are Tough All Over

(Via Bloomberg)

Wall Street Bonus Withdrawal Means Trading Aspen for Coupons

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Wall Street’s cash bonus pool fell by 14 percent last year to $19.7 billion, the lowest since 2008, according to projections by New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
“It’s a disaster,” said Ilana Weinstein, chief executive officer of New York-based search firm IDW Group LLC. “The entire construct of compensation has changed.” 

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Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”

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Scheiner said he spends about $500 a month to park one of his two Audis in a garage and at least $7,500 a year each for memberships at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester and a gun club in upstate New York. A labradoodle named Zelda and a rescued bichon frise, Duke, cost $17,000 a year, including food, health care, boarding and a daily dog-walker who charges $17 each per outing, he said.

Still, he sold two motorcycles he didn’t use and called his Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet “the Volkswagen of supercars.”

Scheiner pays $30,000 a year to be part of a New York-based peer-learning group for investors called Tiger 21. Founder Michael Sonnenfeldt said members, most with a net worth of at least $10 million, have been forced to “re-examine lots of assumptions about how grand their life would be.”
While they aren’t asking for sympathy, “at their level, in a different way but in the same way, the rug got pulled out,” said Sonnenfeldt, 56. “For many people of wealth, they’ve had a crushing setback as well.” 

 But Wall Street millionaires aren't the only ones suffering, although their suffering is more poignant than most. Just listen to these sad stories:

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I used to be even handsomer when I was younger.


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Do you know how long it's been since I WON a Superbowl?

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The second trilogy wasn't as well received as the first!

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My second TV series got cancelled. Now all I have is the Ice Age movies.
 And residuals from Raymond.

Getting the Headline Totally Wrong.

(via ABC News)
Obama Birth Certificate Maybe Forged, Sheriff Joe Arpaio Says

Way to write a headline, ABC. Do you have any idea what you're doing? You wrote the headline as if Arpaio's claim had some merit. When you lead with the claim, it implies that the claim is true or has a good chance of being true. Let me give you an example.


Rain Likely, Says Meteorologist. 
See, that headline implies that "rain is likely" is a prediction that has a good chance of coming true, and that the reason it is likely to be correct is that it was made by an expert, a meteorologist. And your headline implies that bullshit birtherism has some validity because it is being alleged by Arpaio.

Your headline should have read:
Arpaio Asserts Demonstrably False Claim.
or
Racist Sheriff Makes Outrageous Allegation.
or
Stupid Person Believes Stupid Thing.