How Poor Are You?

"How poor are you?" That's what formerly rich guys ranging from hedge-fund kings and tech pioneers to bankers and trust-fund heirs are now asking each other at dinners around town.

This group doesn't care who ends up buying Wachovia. That's all background news; just one more sorry piece of detail in the carnage of a lost battle that's left them ruined. None believes US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan or its revisions can stave off devastation.

For a society that has pretended not to talk about money, while caring about little else, suddenly the experience of being nouveau pauvre is all that's on everyone's lips.

Startlingly, Manhattan bankers who once flew private, had yachts, homes, wives and servants, and owned art worth hundreds of millions, are not afraid to say: "We've lost everything."

Some of them even compare themselves with workers in Detroit: "At least I'm not as badly hit as that," they say.

Well, thank goodness for the reality check.

Last Friday night at a birthday party given for 200 of the former rich at a downtown circus where socialites wore jeans and the bar was open one financier asked about 10 other men in turn: "So how much have you lost?" All said: "Too much or enough to be ruinous."

People are even openly asking: "Dumped the wife yet? If not, why not? You hate her; she hates you. Now, you've nothing to lose ..."

On Saturday, I was invited to a baby shower. At the last moment we were called to be told: Absolutely No Gifts, Please. Social liberation is the upside of what many fear will be the most harrowing few years anyone under 80 has experienced. One financier was so troubled not just by the fact that he's lost his millions but also by the effective collapse of government that he told me he is planning to retire to study government and to develop a think-tank to ensure we never see a breakdown like this one ever again.

There was talk of the end of America as a superpower. "We're done. Watch China rise," people are saying. Yet a few loners weren't about to quit. "This is the time to put our thinking caps on and innovate," said a Silicon Valley overlord. Well, let's hope he's thinking hard. With Wall Street in tatters, Silicon Valley may be our last hope.

This article was originally published by the London Evening Standard .

Follow Vicky Ward on Twitter: www.twitter.com/VickyPJWard

Comments

[MatoSka]

I am so poor that three years ago I withdrew my pension fund to survive. I am so poor that I withdrew my "savings" from the bank and put it under my mattress without feeling a lump. I am so poor that I have only a small pension to supplement Social Security. I am so poor that health care is a luxury, not a necessity. I am so poor that I am looking at the used car market like others look at the stock market before I sell my car that I have paid off.

[jen45]

How poor are you? Well, lets put it this way, we are barely scraping by on the lousy 3,000 and something my family and I receive on my husbands social security. Secure-ity? What is so secure about the future of our SOCIAL-SECURITY when it is being passed out to other nations and funded to people who come here from other countries in grants and loans never paid back or how about the same people who do not pay taxes.
Has it not become apparent to people the money we have worked so hard for is being handed out to imigrants. Do the people of this country not realize we live in a country of the forgotten? A land that was once filled with oppertunity is being pissed away into the hands of the greedy? Our jobs have gone overseas. Taxes are rising, schools are closing, funding is being displaced and pockets are emptying into the hands of whoremongers and liars who promise empty promises of what changes to expect? Nothing is going to change people! How do you think the war in Iraq is being funded? Do you really believe there is a fund labeled "War Fund". Lets not mention the ex-presidents who still get a cut as well.

Keep the money in our own country , bring our jobs back into our county. Stop lending and and barrowing with other countries let them fend for themselfs and make all immagrants pay taxes.

[jinjinpinti]

We're so poor the leak in our roof has leaks, we're recyling our recycled thrift store buys again and planning a Thanks-but-noThanks day instead of Thanksgiving Day..

[S1m0n]

It's an ill wind...

[cruzy]

This article was just hilarious, even if the people it describes are bit pathetic. What a bunch of drama queens who obviously have never experienced any real adversity in their lives.

I am fortunate to be well-off now and to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, but I know first-hand the experience of having no money to buy food and having to stand in line at a soup kitchen to get my meals. Not only did I learn to be a bit more compassionate toward others, I also learned to have faith that no matter how bad life may get, it will eventually start to get better once you begin to take the incremental steps necessary to change. So, while I have been concerned about the recent economic turmoil, I haven't been panicked or distraught. My life is okay and it will continue to be okay as long as I keep doing the things I need to do. This is a lesson some of those investment bankers would do well to learn. They should be grateful for how well-off they still are, compassionate toward others who have lost more, and secure in their faith that things will gradually start to get better again. Instead, they are wasting time and energy throwing self-indulgent pity parties where they all commiserate about how "poor" they are---what a lot of crap!

[Cranbot]

Well if this article was satire then yes, it would be funny, but this author travels in the elite circles and is describing the true reaction of the never been poor crowd. In the end they will have a harder time than the always been poor crowd. We're all poor people now. Can't we just get along?

[COPerez]

It remains very difficult to feel too sorry for any of the "nouveau pauvre," as you so wonderfully put it. I can't help but feel a little schadenfreude.

But if even a few are moved to "study government and to develop a think-tank to ensure we never see a breakdown like this one ever again," then maybe at least some of the pain that the rest of us will surely feel will be worth it.

Maybe.

[biwee]

It's too early in this debacle to answer the question "how poor are you".
The real crunch on the overall economy has not yet hit mainstream America.
You will be able to answer that question in Mar/Apr 09. Your answer will be rooted in whether or not you have a job, have food security, and did not feel too cold over the winter.

[ancientgirl]

I guess they expect the rest of us struggling to feel sorry for them. Let's see them try to live paycheck to paycheck.