Cry Me A River, Part 3,299

by digby

You may think it’s tough to lose your home, lose your job, lose your health care and lose your retirement nest egg, but you know nothing of the hell that the super-rich go through when they find they are down to their last hundred million:

IT turns out the other half — or at least the tiny slice who live at the top of the wealth pyramid — are not sleeping any better than the rest of America.

At a closed-door meeting of advisers to family offices — which serve families who typically are worth more than $500 million — I learned that the super-rich are just as concerned about the future as everyone else.

Even though the stock market has rebounded from its March 9 low, the family office advisers said many of their wealthiest clients were bracing for more bad news and wondering how it would affect their family unity.

“They are now looking at financial planning and things middle-class families live by,” Kathryn McCarthy, a leading adviser to wealthy families, including the Rockefellers, said at the gathering this week convened by Bessemer Trust

One of my best friends is a financial planner, so if any of you super-rich are looking for one, let me know. She would be thrilled to help you through your time of toil and trouble.

Here’s the thing. If these people are so worried about their futures — as they should be — maybe they should spend some time with their very close pals on Wall Street who apparently don’t give a damn about whether they take down the entire global economy as long as they get their piece before it happens. (Perhaps there’s an island somewhere where they plan to start a new civilization after the apocalypse.)

Of course, the story does go on to tell us why we need to be concerned about such people:

Before you start laughing up your sleeve, be advised that this is not a good thing. When the super-rich get cold feet, the rest of America gets swine flu. They are, after all, the people who might finance new companies that create jobs, make big investments to support existing companies and spread their wealth throughout the economy.

See, they are the productive members of society and we have to protect them by ensuring that they don’t have to pay any taxes. Otherwise we are all screwed.

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