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Why The New York Times Thinks It's Impossible To Live On $500,000

Ina Maier — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:36:00 GMT

There is certainly no shortage of reasons to bash the New York Times, but we've personally always felt a little protective of what is arguably one of the last vestiges of real print media. And then we read this Sunday Styles piece on the financial difficulties of surviving on $500,000 a year. Cue the sound of one teeny, tiny violin...

The author, Allen Salkin, is taking on Obama's threat to cap Wall Street executive pay at $500,000 -- for those firms that accepted bailout funds.

PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student.

Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.

Salkin makes some fair points -- these executives have committed to a standard of living that they can't realistically change over night, without some serious and dramatic ramifications. Expecting them to move or pull their children out of school, for example, is a little drastic. But Salkin's tally of some more exendable expenditures is more than a little gauche, like, let's say, designer dresses and personal trainers:

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.
The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. “Going to those parties,” said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com), “a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she’s not going to wear the same dress.”

It's not unreasonable to expect, in this day and age, that an $80 personal Pilates class can be cut, or a custom Proenza Schouler dress re-worn. But the biggest hole in Salkin's math is where he allows that even their multi-million dollar salaries can barely cut it, especially when the allowed assertion is coming from "the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, The Manny," who happens to also be the privileged spawn of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. Salkin quotes:

"As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable."

And there's the problem. Not only are these the people who, by all accounts, failed miserably at handling the financials of millions, they also failed miserably at their own. Are we wrong here, or should executives with multi-million dollar salaries have been able, at some point, to cobble together some form of savings? Perhaps enough, say, to cover themselves should they have to take a pay cut? Why on earth should we be feeling so sorry for these Wall Street warriors who have spent the last lucrative years spending money so far beyond their means?

Well, Candace Bushnell, whose sage advice we all should be heeding (WHAT?), claims that it's not about the money. It's about the lifestyle:

Does this money buy a chief executive stockholders might prize, a well-to-do man with a certain sureness of stride, something that might be lost if the executive were crowding onto the PATH train every morning at Journal Square, his newspaper splayed against the back of a stranger’s head?
The man would certainly not feel like himself on that train, said Candace Bushnell, the author of “Sex and the City” and other books chronicling New York social mores.
“People inherently understand that if they are going to get ahead in whatever corporate culture they are involved in, they need to take on the appurtenances of what defines that culture,” she said. “So if you are in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, it’s like the same thing that goes back to high school peer pressure. It’s about fitting in.”

You know, she's not wrong. It IS about fitting in -- just this time both the bankers and the New York Times should be attempting to do it with the rest of the world.

Wall Street Madam Goes Down. Alone.

We're Enrolling in Viral Video Film School to Get Our Finances in Order

The Wall Street Journal Will Own The Onion Pretty Soon...

Wall Street Madam Goes Down. Alone.

Emily Farris — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:24:00 GMT

New York madam Kristin Davis—who once counted former New York governor Eliot Spitzer among her clients—is going down. But her clients aren't gong down with her. At least not yet.

After her arrest, Davis pleaded guilty to "promoting prostitution" and forfeited nearly $500,000 in profits. And even after she offered her client list to the district attorney's office, Davis said they "showed no interest" in pursuing the men who would charge prostitution services to corporate credit cards. Many ordered her to send invoices for computer consulting and construction expenses—fraud on their part, according to former New York prosecutor Sid Baumgarten.

Davis did however, give her list to ABC News, who gladly accepted it.

From her list, ABC determined that clients included:

-a vice president of NBC Universal
-a part owner of an MLB team
-a major New York real estate developer who would "come to the door wearing women's panties"
-bankers and directors from JP Morgan Securities, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank

A defense attorney who has represented madams before says that in New York, while Davis "was prosecuted for a felony, the clients would be guilty of misdemeanors."

Davis is aware she's getting the short end of the shaft here:

"I, as the proprietor of a business get arrested and lose everything, when no one that was frequenting my business, spending $200,000, $300,000 a year, has been punished in any way or even looked into."

She has not yet decided whether she'll release her client list to the public, but considering she's written a book and has leaked it to ABC news, we plan on seeing it pretty soon.

Her interview with ABC airs tonight on 20/20 at 10 p.m. ET.

[ABC: CEOs, Bankers Used Corporate Credit Cards for Sex, Says New York Madam]

Related:

Rumor: Governor Running A Brothel Out of His Office

David Vitter: "Thank Christ You Forgot About Me"

Ashley Dupré: Whoring and Boring on 20/20

Sloppy Seconds: More Fun With Sarah Palin Affair Rumors

Emily Farris — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:36:00 GMT

~~Hootie~~ Darius Rucker, front man of Hootie and the Blowfish, has bumped Jessica Simpson from the top of Billboard's country chart. Um, is Hank Williams rolling over in his grave? [Us]

Heather Mills gave hamburgers to poor kids in the Bronx last weekend. Except she didn't exactly tell the kids the burgers were vegan. [Gourmet]

We imagine 13-year-old Christian girls (and their mothers) with no taste in music and boys are about the only ones not happy about Clay Aiken coming out. [People]

Yes, we were right. [Radar]

Will you buy Blair and Chuck's albums? We will not. Though we also said we would not watch "Gossip Girl".. sigh. [MTV]

Just as you should not go to George Clooney with a medical emergency (save something stuck in your vagina), you probably shouldn't go to Michael Douglas in times of financial crisis. But hell, nobody else is doing a good job of fixing it, so maybe the "Wall Street" star can offer some hope? [Yahoo!]

If what The Enquirer says is true (hey, they were right about John Edwards) then Sarah Palin used to fuck a snowmobile dealer named Brad Hanson, yet another business parter of poor Todd Palin. [Wonkette]

We're Enrolling in Viral Video Film School to Get Our Finances in Order

Nicole Pasulka — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:15:00 GMT

This is some good video commentary. Current TV's Brett Erlich explores the wild world of financial media website video features while we laugh our faces off. Serious. It's not about Wall Street, it's about hilarity, and since we're broke, jokes are really all we can afford anyway.

Financials a little too dry for your taste? After the jump, watch Brett dive into the hott mess that is videos of animals fighting each other.

Scanner : wall street

Why The New York Times Thinks It's Impossible To Live On $500,000

Bush on the Economy: "Wall Street got drunk"

Wall Street Madam Goes Down. Alone.

We're Enrolling in Viral Video Film School to Get Our Finances in Order

The Wall Street Journal Will Own The Onion Pretty Soon...

Wall Street Madam Goes Down. Alone.

Rumor: Governor Running A Brothel Out of His Office

David Vitter: "Thank Christ You Forgot About Me"

Ashley Dupré: Whoring and Boring on 20/20

Sloppy Seconds: More Fun With Sarah Palin Affair Rumors

We're Enrolling in Viral Video Film School to Get Our Finances in Order