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January 28, 2010
New Embattled Minority: Wall Street Brokers
By N. R. KLEINFIELD
The well-groomed brokers and traders bent on sticking up for Wall Street gathered on Wednesday in best-behaved form — no chanting, no shrill whistling, pretty much no noise at all — to mark the formation of the financial world’s modest alternative to the Tea Party movement.
Things had gotten entirely too annoying. First it was White House (and populist) complaints about Wall Street recklessness and greed (humongous bonuses). Now it was White House desire to attach new regulations and taxes to banks. Enough!
And so a rally was organized at lunchtime on the 23rd floor of 14 Wall Street, directly across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, in the cushy offices of John Thomas Financial, a three-year-old investment house. It was much more comfortable than, say, the street.
As Thomas Belesis, the 35-year-old chief executive of John Thomas who hatched the idea, put it, “It’s cold out.”
The specific purpose was to announce a nonpartisan organization called restorewallstreet.com, devoted to “bringing the pride back into Wall Street.” The name was savewallstreet.com a day earlier, but Mr. Belesis had a last-minute change of mind. He didn’t feel Wall Street needed saving, just its image polished.
The event didn’t quite go the way it was foreshadowed. The press alert promised a “rally with hundreds of brokers and traders.” In fact, about 30 of the attendees were from elsewhere on Wall Street. The rest were the brokers and traders at John Thomas. Since the rally was held on the firm’s 25,000-square-foot trading floor, where some 100 brokers had their desks, most of the attendees were basically working.
During the rally’s half-hour duration, the numerous flat-screen TVs on the wall were shut off, interrupting the Capitol Hill testimony on the A.I.G. bailout by Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former treasury secretary. That mattered less than that you could no longer see how the market was doing. In any event, it wasn’t doing that great.
The fact that virtually all of the virtually all-male attendees wore suits and ties did make the gathering perhaps the best-dressed rally in history.
After brief remarks by Mr. Belesis (“Due to recent events, we must heed the clarion call for change”), the microphone was given to Bruce A. Blakeman, the little-known Long Island Republican lawyer running for the United States Senate (“My friends, we can’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg”). The rest of the rally essentially became a press conference for Mr. Blakeman.
Before the rally began, Mr. Belesis explained that he had begun thinking about forming this group in the last month or so as he heard “the repeating, relentless attacks on Wall Street.”
“I wanted the people who work on Wall Street to be heard,” he said.
Wayne S. Kaufman, the firm’s chief market analyst, alluded to the insulting and “infantile language” like “fat-cat bankers” emanating from President Obama.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “we’re citizens of the United States, too.”
Exactly how the new organization will function was left unclear, though Mr. Belesis said it would stage events and put up signs.
Todd Shapiro, a public relations man helping out, said, “It’s going to be like a Chamber of Commerce and a pit bull for Wall Street.”
It will not confine itself to intrusion from the White House. Mr. Shapiro said: “If someone in the middle of Minnesota says something bad about Wall Street, we will respond.”
This was, of course, delicate territory, Wall Street personnel not being especially high on many peoples’ lists of deprived and maltreated constituencies. There was, in fact, little evident anger expressed at the rally.
David Hilton Page, 45, John Thomas’s managing director of alternative investments, calmly explained how he liked what he heard about the new organization.
Was he angry? “I’m not angry,” he said. “I’m concerned. I think anger is a misused word. Negative thoughts never seem to get me anywhere, so why start now.”
Who would feel sympathy for the rallying Wall Streeters? “That’s a good question,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Johnathan McHale, 30, a John Thomas broker, said he was “blown away” by the idea of the organization. But he wasn’t angry, either. “I’m too focused on raising assets,” he said. “And there’s pretty much a no-negativism policy here.”
Did he feel like a fat cat? “No, not at all,” he said. “I feel like a strong cat.”
He rattled off how he got up at 5:15 in the morning and worked until 4:15 p.m., taking a break to hit the gym before getting back on the phones until 10 at night.
Spend a week in his shoes, he suggested, and “you’ll feel like a tired cat.”
The rally ended a little after 1. The flat screens came alive. Henry Paulson was still testifying. The Dow was down 43 points. It would improve.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/ny...nkers.html?hpw
Things had gotten entirely too annoying. First it was White House (and populist) complaints about Wall Street recklessness and greed (humongous bonuses). Now it was White House desire to attach new regulations and taxes to banks. Enough!
And so a rally was organized at lunchtime on the 23rd floor of 14 Wall Street, directly across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, in the cushy offices of John Thomas Financial, a three-year-old investment house. It was much more comfortable than, say, the street.
As Thomas Belesis, the 35-year-old chief executive of John Thomas who hatched the idea, put it, “It’s cold out.”
The specific purpose was to announce a nonpartisan organization called restorewallstreet.com, devoted to “bringing the pride back into Wall Street.” The name was savewallstreet.com a day earlier, but Mr. Belesis had a last-minute change of mind. He didn’t feel Wall Street needed saving, just its image polished.
The event didn’t quite go the way it was foreshadowed. The press alert promised a “rally with hundreds of brokers and traders.” In fact, about 30 of the attendees were from elsewhere on Wall Street. The rest were the brokers and traders at John Thomas. Since the rally was held on the firm’s 25,000-square-foot trading floor, where some 100 brokers had their desks, most of the attendees were basically working.
During the rally’s half-hour duration, the numerous flat-screen TVs on the wall were shut off, interrupting the Capitol Hill testimony on the A.I.G. bailout by Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former treasury secretary. That mattered less than that you could no longer see how the market was doing. In any event, it wasn’t doing that great.
The fact that virtually all of the virtually all-male attendees wore suits and ties did make the gathering perhaps the best-dressed rally in history.
After brief remarks by Mr. Belesis (“Due to recent events, we must heed the clarion call for change”), the microphone was given to Bruce A. Blakeman, the little-known Long Island Republican lawyer running for the United States Senate (“My friends, we can’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg”). The rest of the rally essentially became a press conference for Mr. Blakeman.
Before the rally began, Mr. Belesis explained that he had begun thinking about forming this group in the last month or so as he heard “the repeating, relentless attacks on Wall Street.”
“I wanted the people who work on Wall Street to be heard,” he said.
Wayne S. Kaufman, the firm’s chief market analyst, alluded to the insulting and “infantile language” like “fat-cat bankers” emanating from President Obama.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “we’re citizens of the United States, too.”
Exactly how the new organization will function was left unclear, though Mr. Belesis said it would stage events and put up signs.
Todd Shapiro, a public relations man helping out, said, “It’s going to be like a Chamber of Commerce and a pit bull for Wall Street.”
It will not confine itself to intrusion from the White House. Mr. Shapiro said: “If someone in the middle of Minnesota says something bad about Wall Street, we will respond.”
This was, of course, delicate territory, Wall Street personnel not being especially high on many peoples’ lists of deprived and maltreated constituencies. There was, in fact, little evident anger expressed at the rally.
David Hilton Page, 45, John Thomas’s managing director of alternative investments, calmly explained how he liked what he heard about the new organization.
Was he angry? “I’m not angry,” he said. “I’m concerned. I think anger is a misused word. Negative thoughts never seem to get me anywhere, so why start now.”
Who would feel sympathy for the rallying Wall Streeters? “That’s a good question,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Johnathan McHale, 30, a John Thomas broker, said he was “blown away” by the idea of the organization. But he wasn’t angry, either. “I’m too focused on raising assets,” he said. “And there’s pretty much a no-negativism policy here.”
Did he feel like a fat cat? “No, not at all,” he said. “I feel like a strong cat.”
He rattled off how he got up at 5:15 in the morning and worked until 4:15 p.m., taking a break to hit the gym before getting back on the phones until 10 at night.
Spend a week in his shoes, he suggested, and “you’ll feel like a tired cat.”
The rally ended a little after 1. The flat screens came alive. Henry Paulson was still testifying. The Dow was down 43 points. It would improve.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/ny...nkers.html?hpw