Pain & Pleasure

http://www.leaderpost.com/Grads+face+worst+fears/1435813/story.html

"I feel sorry for the students graduating now because if they'd graduated a year ago, they could write their own ticket. How quickly the tables have turned." Brady McMahon is set to graduate in April with a bachelor of commerce degree from the University of Calgary. He's trying to stay focused amid the gloomy news and land a job in investment banking.

"It's slowed down quite a bit here in Canada," said McMahon, 22. "And the competition is greater because there are a lot of people who've been laid off in that industry. Guys with more experience and education are trying to get into positions that typically go to new graduates." He's casting a wider net by applying for jobs in Stockholm and Hong Kong. If they don't pan out, he'll consider non-profit work in a developing country.
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A whole generation of pampered kids will graduate into the worst job market in living memory. If they cannot get their start as a bangster, they want to go save the world. It is really sick that money grubbers want to pretend to be do-gooders. What does that tell you about the work which these non-profits really do?

Like all the other articles, this one wants to encourage young people to become entrepreneurs -- YAWN YAWN YAWN -- as if it is that easy. :D
 
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-headhunter3-2009jul03,0,2773259.story

Cheers babe! This article made me smile :D. What do people who leave Wall Street without a sufficient nest egg do? What happens to these people if they were not very talented to begin with but just got lucky and landed in the right place at the right time? One hopes that some of them will learn humility, but that might be a tad too hopeful.

Despite recent signs of improvement, she knows that only a relative handful of Wall Street's jobless will find work any time soon, and many may never again take home the gargantuan paychecks they had come to view as a birthright.
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When cutbacks first struck Wall Street last year, layoff victims assumed they'd rebound easily. But fear supplanted swagger as they realized their center of gravity had shifted.

"For the first time in their lives, Harvard MBAs -- fast-paced, fast-track people -- were unemployed," Branthover said. "They are freaked. And they are [saying], 'Please help me get my act together because I can't even go on an interview.' "
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"There are people that really weren't talented enough to be on Wall Street but, because of the overabundance of work, they were on Wall Street," she said. "They will have to leave."
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http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/07/05/2009-07-05_untitled__rayo5m.html

You have to wonder how much free publicity Stephen Chen and Iris Chau are going to get. Their 'new idea' has been used by the poor in developing countries for as long as tires have been around. But the media makes it seem like Mosses has descended from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments now that the former 'financiers' has taken the plunge. The product has not even shipped yet and these heroes of the new age of bankster-turned-entrepreneur have had their names plastered everywhere.

When Rachael Chong was an analyst at UBS, she wanted to do volunteer work, but couldn't find a nonprofit that needed her banking know-how.

Now she's starting a business that plays matchmaker between volunteers and the nonprofits that most need their professional expertise.

"Nonprofits have never imagined that the tasks they struggle with could be done by skilled volunteers," said Chong, 27, who runs her company, Catchafire, out of her SoHo apartment.

She wrote its business plan as her dissertation for a master's degree she just finished at Duke. It got an A.
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You go girl, Rachael! At least she is not one of those people who are jumping onto the medical school bandwagon just to perpetuate her lust for the upper-middle class high life.

"We are working to preserve and revitalize their cultural traditions," said MacCombie, 24, a recent Brown graduate.

And they're giving the farmers an incentive to preserve the rain forest. Guayusa needs shade from other trees to grow.

MacCombie and Gage, 23, who also went to Brown, are busy with company startup work in Ecuador.

Their New York base of operations is their financial adviser's West Village apartment. The bottling will be done by a metro-area contract manufacturer.
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A couple of boys in the early twenties can save the world just by sitting in an apartment in the West Village. All you lot can do is crane your neck out and laugh at other people¡¯s misery. When will any of you do something as stupendous as preserving and revitalizing the cultural traditions of indigenous farmers in wild and dangerous places like Guyana?
 
ming , thanks for the chronicle.

those going to med school might be in for a rude surprise - MD friends of mine are feeling the squeeze & are seeing their incomes cut by about 20 %. GW med school is around $55k just for tuition & figure you'll need an extra 25k for living expenses annually. 80k x 4 = 320k in loans, interest capitalized over residency (slave wages of 35k for 80h work weeks). Minimum length residency 3 years to be a primary care type doc which are typically the lowest paid - $160k /year, after tax $110k. Loan repayment around $3k month so annual income after taxes & repayment $74k. Hope they've used their finance skills to crunch those numbers before they apply!
 
I do feel sorry for the people who are rushing into medical school. As you pointed out, the numbers do not actually work. After tax, after medical liability insurance and the upkeep costs of various professional fees plus continuing education expenses, many doctors would be better off if they had become plumbers instead; at least the financial investment needed to become a plumber is low and the ROI on vocational training is likely to be positive if you are willing to do the work.

It has been pointed out on this thread before that Obama's plans to do more with less in healthcare will really crimp the earnings of many physicians. They will be forced to accept patients who cannot pay and then to deal with a government bureaucracy who does not want to on the grounds that wasteful medical spending must be curtailed.

Also, it is very naive to believe that doctors do not get laid-off, they do. Like any market there is a response to supply and demand and medical schools have a financial incentive to churn out as many doctors as they can and hospitals have a need to recruit as many slave-wage residents as they can accommodate. The result is oversupply in certain fields and some of the unlucky ones will either be unemployed or underemployed.

Many of these kids only think about the money that they will make, they never seem to consider how difficult it really is to take care of sick people. Nor do they realize that many of the conditions which take up the bulk of healthcare spending like heart disease, diabetes and the like are chronic life-style related afflictions. If people will not stop smoking, start eating less and exercising more - in other words taking care of themselves - there is really nothing anyone can do for them. But still they will go to the doctor seeking a cure when none is available. Little wonder that they get angry and want to sue. And of course we all die but not everyone seems to accept this one simple enduring truth.

There are going to be a lot of very angry doctors down the road. They are likely to have gone to the best schools and made the decision to commit to medicine during a period of intense trauma during their youthful twenty-something years. Life for these people will appear to be a never ending series of very shitty grind to try and catch a carrot that keeps getting shifted. Even if you do not make money, at least you will have fun trading. :D
 
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/another-view-in-praise-of-law-firm-layoffs/?hp

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a_pq81zQiLBs

There is so much material on law firm layoffs unlike the virtual clamp down on any reporting on the now long settled depression amongst the former Wall Street crowd. Why are bangsters protected but lawyers not? Why is not okay to make fun of former Wall Streeters who are now permanent members of the long term unemployed and thus unemployable but entirely acceptable to gawk at the unfolding drama of imploding law firms?
 
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61O48I20100225

http://m.cnbc.com/us_news/35566066?refresh=true

Someone needs to tell these people that if you are out of the Street for more than a year, you are out for life. Your hands get cold when you are no longer in the game. It is sad to still read articles about how people are hanging on to the hope of getting back on the gravy train. They really seem to believe that they are special and irreplaceable. Some have run down their savings and there are stories about how former bankers are homeless and living out of their Lexus SUVs. If only they would adapt to the new realities, they would be fine. Send the kids to a public school, move to a cheaper home, and get rid of all the toys. If they make the adjustment, some of these people will never have to work another day in their lives. Yet they insist on their upper middle class prerogatives. For them it is glam and glory or bust. I guess bust it is then.
 
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