It’s summertime and the livin’ is easy. Unless, of course, if you work on Wall Street, where life kind of sucks right now, according to people who work on Wall Street.
Take this managing director at Goldman Sachs for example, who told CNBC’s John Carney over a few drinks that JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion trading loss has him so “rattled” the he hasn’t been able to make it to his Long Island vacation home at all so far this summer.
“I’m not even sure I remember the address,” he told Carney under the condition of anonymity.
(Read Carney's full report here).
Memorial Day was, like, a second ago, so excuse us if we can’t muster much sympathy for this man who hasn’t had a weekend away in two weeks.
Yes, we've heard, it's rough out there. Bankers are preparing for another round of layoffs as the downturn in Europe eats into their employers’ profits -- as Carney’s unnamed Goldman man notes: “I’m working my [posterier] off just so that I don’t wind up on the cutting block.” And to be sure, layoffs are back at Goldman again, and, as The Atlantic Wire notes, they went for the big wigs this time around.
The environment has been tense for a while. Around bonus time, one midlevel Goldman employee even described the scene as something of a "bloodbath" -- one girl allegedly cried.
It’s a fear that’s hanging over Hamptons real estate. Home prices in Wall Street’s summer playground dropped nearly 17 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to the Wall Street Journal. Declining cash bonuses among financial industry workers to blame?
But this isn’t the first time the dour economy has hung over Wall Street’s summer fun like a rain cloud on the beach. Both 2010 and 2011 got off to a good start with the U.S. gaining jobs and the economy growing at a reasonable pace, but in both cases the growth petered out by summertime.
At least it’s gotten finance industry workers accustomed to coping with a little bit less. In 2010, Wall Streeters cut back on flashy Hamptons real estate purchases in part to avoid scrutiny, the New York Post reported at the time.