the finance industry / wall street

anyway, even if you broke down that top decile further I don't think you'd find a significant percentage of those people were MORE leveraged than most Americans.

well, the point was more if we pull the super rich out of the equation (as affable outliers!) then are the rich still leveraged like the rest of us (by percentage of aggregate debt!)? Honestly, with debt levels around 20% for even 70% of households, my argument about people being leveraged seems HORRIBLE. I need to find a new metric. Or invent one.

I didn't read the details of the breakdown that well. I think it's possible to download the whole table of data and then maybe we could (likely?) slice and dice by whatever we wanted and create our own income stratas.

I thought I'd read before that typical HH debt target (for mortgage purposes and including mortgage) was somewhere around 36%. Was very surprised to see aggregate debt levels below that.

Keep in mind that those debt levels are heavily skewed by renters. Mortgages are going to be by far the biggest ticket debt item for a family, and a family that doesn't have a mortgage is going to have a much tinier debt burden than an equal income family with none. That's why you see relatively even debt-service-to-income ratios, yet the percentages of lower income families with greater than 40% of their income going to service debt are MUCH higher.

yes, I was thinking I could go get a table of home ownership and then manually factor that in but it became too much of a hassle. And really this discussion point was supposed to be essentially about cash flow...so rents are related if I'd not have strayed over into debt.

But still, I would probably assume that at least the middle income strata had a high degree of home ownership, and that those home owners likely were near the limits of their loaning ability, and that therefore the 20% was low.

it's a cliche, but that almost seems like an onion article

not to derail or be too lol obvious, but the kickoff to this conversation seems rather liberally sourced from this chestnut

the orig. article seems a bit dry f/ satire, though even the lonely-at-the-top sentimental horseshit w/ Oliver James waxing on the simple (and apparently inexpensive) joys of one's student years is ripped straight from the novel. (OTOH "Sarah Butcher" seemed f/ at least a few minutes to have effectively pitched the noxious notion of the upper strata as just another besieged bourgeois outpost affected terribly by the financial shenanigans of ~mysterious others~).

/parenthetical bs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/01/alexis-goldstein-jim-himes_n_3196206.html#slide=more34585

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/05/02/crude-broker-talk-surfaces-in-london-trading-probe/

http://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/134725/how-to-tell-your-wife-or-husband-you-got-a-bad-bonus/

"bad bonus"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQXuazYI_YU

Was that "bad bonus" piece for real?

this is amazing:

3. Don’t accuse your wife or girlfriend of being a hypocrite
One equity researcher who said he hasn’t had a bonus for five years, advised bankers to resist the temptation to criticize wives’ reactions to the size of their bonus

“My own experience is that a lot of wives and girlfriends of investment bankers don’t necessarily like the fact that their partner is in banking – they’d rather be with someone who’s doing something much more worthy. Spouses pretend that they don’t like the money and the long hours, but the fact is that they also love the expensive holidays and meals out.

“Banking partners are therefore a bit hypocritical. It’s tempting to point this out when a bonus doesn’t come through. I’ve never actually said that to my girlfriend though as it would just cause an argument,” he added.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/opinion/a-disappointing-debut-at-the-sec.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130506&_r=0

Mary Jo White's initial review for early actions taken

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarotta/2013/04/21/is-a-3-million-ira-sufficient-for-retirement/

Forbes defending the rich folks rights to enormous IRAs, and neo-con Hyatt at the Post even thinks Forbes is wrong. This will never pass anyway

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fred-hiatt-obamas-modest-proposal-to-cap-retirement-entitlements/2013/05/05/de9eea7a-b402-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_story.html?tid=pm_pop

wow so much wrong with that Forbes article

forbes blogs are like bleachercrowd / gawkers new thing etc. etc.

the crowdsourcing of linkbait

http://blogs.forbes.com/help/how-do-i-become-a-contributor/

ilx should start a forbes blog

Assuming 4.5% inflation, a 20-year-old starting to save for retirement today will need a $9.97 million portfolio value at age 65 to have a lifestyle of $60,000 in today’s dollars.

We haven't had inflation of 4.5% or close to it since the early 1990s.

the bigger point though is that Obama's proposal is not a cap on how much you can save for retirement, which is what the article makes it sound like

this is like finding fault w/ a comment for a yahoo news article

Is it really? The guy has written dozens of pieces for Forbes and has his own wealth management firm

yes...in charlottesville virginia

with 66 twitter followers
https://twitter.com/MarottaOnMoney

What I also don't get about the cap proposal -- traditional IRAs already have a tax-free contribution limit per year, so what would the cap change?

again he has not written '66 pieces for forbes', forbes allows basically anyone to start a forbes blog

the seeking alpha of money magazines

Don't care about a Forbes blog, or the W, Post editorial re a Forbes blog, here's the USA Today(!):

The president's proposed budget would cap IRAs and other retirement plans at $3 million, but it could fall below that in future years.

It's not easy to get more than $3 million in a retirement account, which includes IRAs, 401(k) and 403(b) plans. Currently, the cap would affect just 0.03% of retirement accounts, says the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

But despite the above:

Capping IRA could deter savings without helping reduce the deficit, Ronald O'Hanley, president of Asset Management and Corporate Services at Fidelity Investments, argued at a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Wednesday. Most retirement programs are tax deferrals, not tax breaks, he argues: Savers pay taxes when they withdraw. "Not only will such a proposal further challenge retirement savings, it will not generate additional revenue," he says.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/04/10/presidents-budget-plan-iras-cap/2071529/

Sure buddy.

http://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/141013/goldman-sachs-hires-particle-physicist-from-the-large-hadron-collider/

New rules to regulate derivatives, adopted last week by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are a victory for Wall Street

That's from the New York Times

http://truth-out.org/video/item/16500-banks-win-big-as-regulators-refuse-to-rein-in-700-trillion-derivatives-market

A discussion of it from elsewhere

Upthread there are comments from Hurting 2 and others about how you can't charge Wall Street folks for actions that are not crimes.

This won't help:

May 24 New York Times

DEALBOOK
Banks' Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills
By ERIC LIPTON and BEN PROTESS
In a sign of Wall Street's resurgent influence in Washington, bank lobbyists are aiding lawmakers in drafting legislation that softens financial regulations

'lobbyists help draft bills' is not a news story

It's news to the extent that the details go counter to the Obama and Democratic party PR meme re enforcement of Dodd-Frank (yep I know its only been pr and never really true). I was gonna add that myself, but it's worth mentioning how its still going on, business as usual, although that's no surprise either.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/banks-lobbyists-help-in-drafting-financial-bills/

One bill that sailed through the House Financial Services Committee this month — over the objections of the Treasury Department — was essentially Citigroup’s, according to e-mails reviewed by The New York Times. The bill would exempt broad swathes of trades from new regulation.

do you know what that means

it means absolutely nothing because the bill will not be passed

Representative Maxine Waters, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, was among the few Democrats opposing the change, echoing the concerns of consumer groups.

A watered-down compromise version that will satisfy Wall Street may pass though

Grassley said in a statement late Wednesday he had not heard from the White House about Comey's nomination but said Comey possessed a lot of important experience on national security issues.

"But, if he's nominated, he would have to answer questions about his recent work in the hedge fund industry," Grassley said. "The administration's efforts to criminally prosecute Wall Street for its part in the economic downturn have been abysmal, and his agency would have to help build the case against some of his colleagues."

Senator Grassley, man of the people

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/join-wall-street-save-the-world/?hpid=z1

Hedge fund types who give large chunks of their salary to fighting malaria and other charities

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_06/dim_prospects_for_brownvitter045192.php

Bipartisan tougher regulation for big banks not likely to go anywhere

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/alexis-goldstein-the-intimidate-the-ctfc-act/2013/06/12/18451f48-d374-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html?hpid=z2

So derivatives experts, is this Occupy guy's guest editorial regarding a derivatives bill wrong?

Occupy person

that basically makes sense. iirc lots of components of bank operations are in london instead of e.g. ny because of different regulations. including, especially, the ability to take something you've gotten as a swap from someone else, and in turn engage in a swap with it, etc. so that big pools of capital can be generated from just swapping the same things back and forth.

We're doomed

here's the paper i was thinking of on this stuff. singh has done lots of follow-on research too. gotta love the term 'rehypothication'!

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=24075.0

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/06/swap-jurisdiction-certainty-act-house-cross-border

More on House efforts to weaken financial oversight

man wall street today is just like "STIMULUS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"

Hedge fund types who give large chunks of their salary to fighting malaria and other charities

one of my cousins is a hedge fund manager of a rather influential euro fund.

so much so, that the bonus he received a few years back was worthy of press attention ..

so, a few inquiries within the family boundaries revealed that he hated the crap he was involved in and that he wanted to pack it all in and do good with his ill gotten gained fortune.

well, 5 years later.

he's still f*cking us all over and picking up his bonuses ..

the only people who walk away from hedge fund bonuses is no one