New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to spend $45 million in government money retraining investment bankers, brokers and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street, says the New York Times.
Under a program Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled on Wednesday, the city wants to invest $45 million in government money to retrain investment bankers, traders and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street, as well as provide seed capital and office space for new businesses those laid-off bankers might create.
The plan is intended to stem the exodus of talent from the rapidly collapsing financial services industry, which has been the city’s economic engine for decades, and speed the industry’s recovery, which may take years, officials said.
City officials also plan to try to lure big banks and financial companies from Asia and other parts of the world to set up operations in New York, filling some of the void created by the implosion of large American firms like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. They hope to receive permission from the federal and state governments to use $30 million of federal money to attract those companies and other financial firms to Lower Manhattan.
They’d better hurry up. Packs of laid off Wall Street guys are already invading 30 Rock.
New York to Spend $45 Million to Retrain Laid-Off Wall Streeters [NYT]
(Photo:Maulliegh)
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My heart bleeds for them.
Shouldn’t these people have already earned and SAVED enough to not need public assistance?
Oh that’s right. Whoops.
@Chad M Pawlenty: Duh, they ran BANKS. They didn’t know anything about how MONEY works!
@Eyebrows McGee: I feel bad for laughing at that.
*Looks at bank statement* Now I feel worse.
*Watches the news* If you need me, I’ll be over there, curled up in the fetal position, crying.
Right, blow a bunch of government money providing training to educated people who already possess marketable skills. Fantastic idea. Where can I sign up?
@jackal676: Exactly! If none of them are clever enough to take their education and skills into another business sector… they don’t deserve training. Let them be humble and work as cashiers somewhere.
@jackal676: My guess is it would be heavier on the incentives to start new business/atract foreign company end, and lighter on the retraining. Basically they are looking for the national government to pay for what states usually have to supply as incentive in the form of tax cuts. Essentially, Bloomberg wants to have his cake and eat it too.
I think he should just eat it.
That “30 Rock” episode was hilarious.
I strongly doubt the bankers are those in the most need during the crisis, but I have to admit that I already know several people who are themselves moving (or have friends who are moving) to other banking centers like Delaware and Charlotte. On the one hand, this could mean that New York’s real estate goes from being mind-shatteringly, overwhelmingly expensive to just overwhelmingly expensive, so that the rest of us here might actually be able to buy homes and we can have a decent art scene going again. On the other hand, we could turn into some creepy ghost town, like Detroit if it loved musical theater.
“How *NOT* To Run Your Company Into The Ground And Destroy America” should be required training for all investment bankers.
Hey Bloomberg, let’s not worry about the legions of people in NY’s never ending poverty stricken housing projects. They are where they belong: out of the way. If you don’t make the Wall Street guys happy there could be riots.
@cuchanu: So, up until now those people have had no access to free job training, education, etc.? Huh.
I suggest retraining them for jobs that create wealth, rather than just move it around or earn it through stealthily inserting yourself between every commodity transaction.
Ditch digger comes to mind, or potato farmer.
@zentec: YOU CAN’T TELL EVERYONE THE SECRET TO BANKING! WE’LL HAVE RIOTS ONCE PEOPLE FIGURE OUT WHAT BANKS REALLY DO! =(
@zentec: This.
Further, I will volunteer my services as a retrainer. I have a lot of dishes that need washing.
@zentec: Plenty of streets that need sweeping in NYC.
And unless I’m mistaken, the garbage doesn’t pick itself up off the curb!
@zentec: Profitable financial services institutions do a very valuable service for society: they direct society’s limited resources and capital to the most productive methods. The better they are at finding productive uses for resources, the more money they make. Remember, I said PROFITABLE. The one’s which can’t make money are a drain on society’s resources.
sort of like reform school?
As a taxpayer, I get a say in this, right? My vote is no. These people have marketable skills already, retraining them is not necessary.
Oh, whats that you said? My opinion doesn’t matter? Nevermind then…
@12-Inch Idongivafuck Sandwich: Committing fraud and skimming are not a marketable skills… anymore (hopefully).
I’m going to stick my dick in a blender, please excuse me.
@ojzitro:
Will it blend?
45 mil? How much does it cost to train Wal-Mart greeters?
Let them go back to selling used cars in Jersey, you know that’s where they’d be if they weren’t mucking up Wall St.
I hope it’s just a clever ploy, like, they go through the double doors to head to ‘class’ and find themselves in the back of a truck en route to the airport to be shipped off to Elbonia.
“BYE AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FUSH.”
That’s worth 45 mil.
@InThrees: Your “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” reference has made my day. Thanks!
@InThrees: You’re not thinking big enough. for that kind of money, we could fire a rocket into the sun, or an interstellar “ark” sending them off to Sagatarius five.
Since when do serial arsonists need government training?
Wait. The risk taking and their supposed expertise as highly skilled workers was the justification for huge salaries and multimillion dollar bonuses. Now these highly paid risk takers want us to retrain them when they obviously still have marketable skills.
They were capable of dealing with the complexities of markets and banking they can relearn an office job. None of us owe them a certain level of pay at a new job.
What a joke. Glad I am not a New Yorker at this point as this seems like an obscene waste of money. So when can I get a bailout by the way?
@StreamOfConsciousness: Are you a bank or banker?
Whenever I hear these Wall Street types whining how tough life is for them I can’t help thinking of this Catherine Tate sketch.
@bohemian: Wow, that show always makes me giggle.
A thousand times no. I could rebuke the ill-conceived logic of Mr. Bloomberg’s grandstanding effort, but, that would be giving validation to such ass-hatery.
I just hope we extend unemployment benefits for C-class executives. Now THAT is a group of people that is suffering in this economic environment.
This is just stupid. How many poor people in America who never had the benefit of going to college still don’t get the public benefit of being trained for the real world. Bankers, who at least have B.A.’s need to get off their lazy asses, need to realize that they’re not hot stuff anymore, and need to join the rest of the real world WITH US. I’ve heard investment bankers complain “oh no my bonus is only going to be $100,000 this year” you know what, GET OVER YOURSELVES.
I didn’t realize it took so much training to learn how to run economies into the ground. ….Oh, sorry, misread that….this is FUTURE training. I had no idea that, in the past, Wall Street was ran by untrained idiots. Thank goodness we have money to throw at this problem and, finally, our economic sector can be ran by people qualified for the position.
*Sarcasm detector explodes*
If the $45 million were to go to retrain the lower-level office and custodial staffs for these firms that folded, leaving them high and dry while they handed out millions of dollars in bonuses to the poor, put-upon brokers, I’d be all for it.
Otherwise, I imagine this is going to go over about as well as Citigroup’s (now-cancelled) private jet purchases on the gummint’s dime.
I SAID NO PICKLES YOU MORON!
@oneliketadow: <3!!!
@oneliketadow: But the market indicated that pickles are going to be the popular pick of next year, and we have to put these things on every burger in order to ensure that our pickle futures go through the roof!
Wait, what do you mean pickles don’t go on ice cream?
Not like they can’t go out and get student loans like the rest of us, right?
FlyersFan:
Just looking at the numbers in your post, its kind of sad how small 45 million looks now in comparison.
Gee, I’ll take some “re-training…” and I didn’t even help ruin the global economy!
How about some government retraining money for those of us laid off in advertising?
(Not to mention manufacturing, publishing, retailing, etc., etc.)
Hey Mikey, about spending $45 million to give the Finest and the Bravest the money they deserve instead of bailing out these goniffs?
Generally unemployment, retraining and workers comp do not make allowances for a person to be able to make what they used to. They usually state “any job” or focus only on job roles not your salary. These people do not need retraining, possibly some ethics classes, but not retraining.
@bohemian: Hey, that’s what I said. Simple lesson: Would your mother be proud of what you did or would she disown you?
I don’t know if spending money to give a leg up to the guys who got us into this mess is the best plan. Frankly, letting them go, only to be replaced by possibly less greedy folks in the next go-round might be best overall.
Why spend all that money retraining them? I have a better idea – send their asses to go work in soup kitchens for a few years.
I took a class like this in college, it was called Ethics.
These people will do just fine on their own. I mean look the Enron people were able to find work at places like Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, AIG, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan,….oh wait. nevermind. Thats right, those enron “people” are the same ones who drove up oil prices this past summer for speculative investment companies like Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, AIG, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan.
I guess it goes to show if you know how to buck the system you’re a valuable commodity somewhere else.
These people/companies just cost us $1,500,000,000,000.00 between the 2 stimulus packages…I dont want to spend another $45,000,000 to retrain these jerkoffs.
The Welfare State will run your life.
@kwsventures: check the voter rolls!! i wonder how many of these now-unemployed people voted against government programs to re-train workers, i.e, voted republican?
These are all smart folks. One class in ethics and they should be good to go.
A kind reminder to Canino? These “people” are the same ones who made millions while they were in their jobs. If they were careless enough to blow all that money, than there retraining programs should be on their own pockets, not yours and certainly not mine!!
I am an NY resident – and completely confused as to whether this could help or is just plain short sighted.
these bankers,brokers,bonkers,etc… should have enough money saved to pay themselves into a seminar.
why should bailout money be used?
I swear where to these polititians get these absurd ideas!
I doubt any amount of retraining would really help. I know if I was currently in the role of hiring people anyone coming from these unethical failed banks would be about the last people I want to hire. I have no interest in rewarding them in any way including a job. I also would be concerned their tainted ideas would poison whatever dept. they worked in.
All those investment bankers need is to tap that 6-month emergency fund and cut out the Starbucks. That’ll save them from a middle-class existence!
WHAT? Bankers, who are the cause of this mess, have already been assisted by the government while the “little people” get no such individual bailout, and now the mayor wants to give individual people who worked at banks a bailout as well??
Lets see if you make say 2 million a year and you are a banker you have a 6 month backup savings Hum. Here in Tn you can buy a place on the river and live quite well for a long time with 1 million dollars.
Every profession has this funny thing called a code of ethics. I say we beat it into ‘em as their retraining. I’ll save NY taxpayers $44,999,650 if you give me these guys and a quality bull whip.
Problem solved.
Keep in mind this is Bloomberg, the same guy who owns a financial services media company. Hmm, I wonder if there are earmarks for special interests anywhere in that $45M. Hmmmmm.
Here is a shovel. Dig a ditch.
Re-education complete.
Sounds like the mayor is worried about his cash cow leaving for greener pastures.
If Bloomberg didn’t spend his days trying to find new and creative ways to tax the hell out of his residents, maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about this brain drain during rough economic times.
He should have some concern, though. It’s going to be tough for him to finance his utopic vision for NYC taxing Starbucks barista and city service employee salaries.
Re-Training for these high class corporate fuckwads who ruined the country and screwed over the american people?
Okay, here’s a list of classes they’ll need to take:
How not to be a douchebag 101
Doing the housework your own goddamn self
Respect for the working class
Stop being greedy
Economics
Hygeine
Feel free to add more to this list.
More money for the Wall Street morons?
Hey, Mayor, get them a sanitation uniform and put them to work where they belong, cleaning up the crap off the NYC streets.
Can you actually put a price tag on COMMON SENSE?