One-Percent Jokes and Plutocrats in Drag

What I Saw When I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society

Recently, our nation’s financial chieftains have been feeling a little unloved. Venture capitalists are comparing the persecution of the rich to the plight of Jews at Kristallnacht, Wall Street titans are saying that they’re sick of being beaten up, and this week, a billionaire investor, Wilbur Ross, proclaimed that “the 1 percent is being picked on for political reasons.”

Ross's statement seemed particularly odd, because two years ago, I met Ross at an event that might single-handedly explain why the rest of the country still hates financial tycoons – the annual black-tie induction ceremony of a secret Wall Street fraternity called Kappa Beta Phi.

“Good evening, Exalted High Council, former Grand Swipes, Grand Swipes-in-waiting, fellow Wall Street Kappas, Kappas from the Spring Street and Montgomery Street chapters, and worthless neophytes!”

It was January 2012, and Ross, wearing a tuxedo and purple velvet moccasins embroidered with the fraternity’s Greek letters, was standing at the dais of the St. Regis Hotel ballroom, welcoming a crowd of two hundred wealthy and famous Wall Street figures to the Kappa Beta Phi dinner. Ross, the leader (or “Grand Swipe”) of the fraternity, was preparing to invite 21 new members — “neophytes,” as the group called them — to join its exclusive ranks.

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After cocktail hour, the new inductees – all of whom were required to dress in leotards and gold-sequined skirts, with costume wigs – began their variety-show acts. Among the night’s lowlights:

• Paul Queally, a private-equity executive with Welsh, Carson, Anderson, & Stowe, told off-color jokes to Ted Virtue, another private-equity bigwig with MidOcean Partners. The jokes ranged from unfunny and sexist (you'll have to read the article to see these jokes)

• Bill Mulrow, a top executive at the Blackstone Group (who was later appointed chairman of the New York State Housing Finance Agency), and Emil Henry, a hedge fund manager with Tiger Infrastructure Partners and former assistant secretary of the Treasury, performed a bizarre two-man comedy skit. Mulrow was dressed in raggedy, tie-dye clothes to play the part of a liberal radical, and Henry was playing the part of a wealthy baron. They exchanged lines as if staging a debate between the 99 percent and the 1 percent. (“Bill, look at you! You’re pathetic, you liberal! You need a bath!” Henry shouted. “My God, you callow, insensitive Republican! Don’t you know what we need to do? We need to create jobs,” Mulrow shot back.)

• David Moore, Marc Lasry, and Keith Meister — respectively, a holding company CEO, a billionaire hedge-fund manager, and an activist investor — sang a few seconds of a finance-themed parody of “YMCA” before getting the hook.

• Warren Stephens, an investment banking CEO, took the stage in a Confederate flag hat and sang a song about the financial crisis, set to the tune of “Dixie.” (“In Wall Street land we’ll take our stand, said Morgan and Goldman. But first we better get some loans, so quick, get to the Fed, man.”)

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-secret-society.html

 

Doncha just love being the butt of these jokers jokes?

 

Does it always have to be framed the left vs the right? Why can't it just be right vs wrong?

According to opensecrets.org that keeps track of political campaign contributions Romney was the most preferred candidate among the bankers and Wall Street traders.

Top Contributors

Barack Obama (D)
1 University of California $1,212,245
2 Microsoft Corp $814,645
3 Google Inc $801,770
4 US Government $728,647
5 Harvard University $668,368

Mitt Romney (R)
1 Goldman Sachs $1,033,204
2 Bank of America $1,013,402
3 Morgan Stanley $911,305
4 JPMorgan Chase & Co $834,096
5 Wells Fargo $677,076

Top Industries

Barack Obama (D)
Retired $54,522,578
Lawyers/Law Firms $27,533,147
Education $21,615,820
Health Professionals $10,456,340
Business Services $8,646,106

Mitt Romney (R)
Retired $64,727,865
Securities & Investment $21,525,657
Real Estate $14,895,300
Lawyers/Law Firms $14,285,200
Health Professionals $12,598,997

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/

 

Look over your shoulder, banker man

“seventh banker to die recently under mysterious circumstances…”

look over your shoulder, banker man

they’re coming

what do you know, banker man,

about a missing trillion dollars

flown away

about Libor

about the other set of books

about big-time politicians who are in on it

look over your shoulder

you could take a walk from your house and never come back

you could jump from the roof of your bank

you could become “undisclosed circumstances”

you could be “waiting for the toxicology report”

you could be “shot yourself eight times with a nail gun”

you could be “died on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La Hotel”

look over your shoulder

better release a statement:

http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/look-over-your-shoulder-banker-man/