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Krugman: The Power of Plutocratic Pettiness
The Power of Plutocratic Pettiness
Via Rich Yeselson, Alec MacGillis has a fantastic piece in the New Republic (unfortunately paywalled) about how hedge fund managers’ love for Obama has turned into blind, spitting hatred. His main argument is that it’s all about feeling disrespected:
This seems completely right to me. When you make a billion dollars a year, you can buy anything you want — which means that goods and services yield almost no marginal utility. What you crave, then, is what money can’t buy: respect.
Actually, I’ve seen this in action at meetings where financial big wheels and professors mingle. You’d think that the people with the big bucks would be confident; on the contrary, they’re insecure, because they want respect for their minds. And I know for a fact that some of Obama’s big-money early backers were motivated in large part by the lure of being in the inner circle in a way that someone like Hillary, with her long record and connections, couldn’t offer.
And now Obama says what anyone paying attention would: that these big-money people were, to some extent, making their money in socially destructive ways — and they go insane, precisely because in their hearts they know that he’s right.
- more -
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/the-power-of-plutocratic-pettiness/
Via Rich Yeselson, Alec MacGillis has a fantastic piece in the New Republic (unfortunately paywalled) about how hedge fund managers’ love for Obama has turned into blind, spitting hatred. His main argument is that it’s all about feeling disrespected:
(M)asters of the universe rarely get much guff in their daily routine: “The guy at the top, the name on the door who raises all the money and makes the big decisions: How’s that guy treated? How many times does someone tell that guy that he might not be a good guy, that, you know, you’re kind of a dick? These guys are not used to getting dinged at all.” And it wasn’t just anyone knocking them–it was the president of the United States, notes Eugene Fama, a legendary finance professor at the University of Chicago and Asness’s former mentor. “Lots of (hedge fund managers) started out poor, and made a huge amount of money, and created thousands and thousands of jobs in the process. They’re used to being the American Dream, and now you have the president who looks at them and sneers at them like they’re bad guys.”
For all the brashness and bravado that goes with their world, it seems the managers are oddly insecure about their purpose. For years, “most people in the financial service sector were viewed with enormous, out-of-the-box respect and adulation,” says Daley. “These guys were on pedestals, and now that pedestal’s gone, and now, in a lot of people’s minds, the industry doesn’t have that glow, and that bothers them, and now they join that with the president and his theoretically bashing the wealthy. They’ve got to blame somebody, and they blame him because he is representative of that group of people who ‘aren’t us.’” Former Official B told me, “Whether it’s (former Fed Chairman Paul) Volcker saying there’s been no financial innovation worth a shit since the ATM or the president saying his thing, they’re hypersensitive.” Former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank was more scathing: “They don’t just want us to represent their interest, they want to be told that what they do is very good. They want to be honored for what they do for society. And Obama has hurt their feelings. Raising their taxes is not simply a blow to their income. It is a blow to their psychic income, a failure to recognize the enormous good they do for the world.”
For all the brashness and bravado that goes with their world, it seems the managers are oddly insecure about their purpose. For years, “most people in the financial service sector were viewed with enormous, out-of-the-box respect and adulation,” says Daley. “These guys were on pedestals, and now that pedestal’s gone, and now, in a lot of people’s minds, the industry doesn’t have that glow, and that bothers them, and now they join that with the president and his theoretically bashing the wealthy. They’ve got to blame somebody, and they blame him because he is representative of that group of people who ‘aren’t us.’” Former Official B told me, “Whether it’s (former Fed Chairman Paul) Volcker saying there’s been no financial innovation worth a shit since the ATM or the president saying his thing, they’re hypersensitive.” Former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank was more scathing: “They don’t just want us to represent their interest, they want to be told that what they do is very good. They want to be honored for what they do for society. And Obama has hurt their feelings. Raising their taxes is not simply a blow to their income. It is a blow to their psychic income, a failure to recognize the enormous good they do for the world.”
This seems completely right to me. When you make a billion dollars a year, you can buy anything you want — which means that goods and services yield almost no marginal utility. What you crave, then, is what money can’t buy: respect.
Actually, I’ve seen this in action at meetings where financial big wheels and professors mingle. You’d think that the people with the big bucks would be confident; on the contrary, they’re insecure, because they want respect for their minds. And I know for a fact that some of Obama’s big-money early backers were motivated in large part by the lure of being in the inner circle in a way that someone like Hillary, with her long record and connections, couldn’t offer.
And now Obama says what anyone paying attention would: that these big-money people were, to some extent, making their money in socially destructive ways — and they go insane, precisely because in their hearts they know that he’s right.
- more -
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/the-power-of-plutocratic-pettiness/
