The Ignorant Investor

“I think President Obama painted everyone with a broad stroke,” said Brian McCaffrey, 55, a Wall Street lawyer who was on his way to see a client. “The way we pay our taxes is bonuses. The only way that we’ll get any of our bailout money back is from taxes on bonuses. I think bonuses should be looked at on a case by case basis, or you turn into a socialist.”

It’s Theirs and They’re Not Apologizing, New York Times, Jan. 20, 2009

If you spend any time around Wall Street, these sentiments wouldn't surprise you. Many people working in and around Wall Street can't manage to reach this level of assholosity, but mostly they aren't in charge. Instead you get guys like this. Many of these folks believe they are geniuses when they have successful trades, not realizing that most people are succeeding in an up market or when macro forces are in their favor. So they're having a little difficulty adjusting to the fact that they don't deserve giant bonuses when they're in a down market. Notice that when the market is down, suddenly it's the fault of the macro situation rather than their own trading that caused the losses. Neat how that works.

Also, keep in mind that many people in the financial services industry have jobs that depend on people doing something stupid with their money. So they're used to using bluster and declarations of their own intelligence and talk of "socialism" to get what they want out of people. I'm not talking about the tons of back office people here and the ones working on infrastructure or in personnel- just the leaders, bankers, lawyers, and traders.