Big Babies

by digby

This article from Davos, featuring another depressingly bearish prediction from Nouriel Roubini, also features yet another infuriating whine from a Master of the Universe pretty much saying that unemployment will stay high next year because bankers’ feelings have been hurt.

Policy makers may be undermining their effort to spur hiring by attacking banks, Blackstone Group LP Chief Executive Officer Steven Schwarzman said in a Jan. 28 interview in Davos. One in four of chief executive officers worldwide surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP for the Davos conference already plans to cut jobs this year.

“Financial institutions will feel under siege and they will retreat,” Schwarzman said. “Their entire world is being shaken and they’re being attacked personally,” he said. “We don’t need those financial institutions insecure.”

If there has ever been a better refutation of the notion that people make rational economic decisions, I haven’t seen it. And even your typical teenager has too much pride to mope so openly.

Keep in mind that nobody’s actually done anything to these people other than making a few of them forgo some bonus money for a year or so. Nobody’s gone to jail. Nobody’s lost everything they have. Indeed, most of the decision makers not only didn’t lose their jobs, they were deemed so valuable that we must allow them complete freedom and as much money as they demand lest they take down the system completely this time. All that’s happened is that they got yelled at by a couple of congressmen and they aren’t being heralded as John Galtish Superheros by magazines and newspapers at the moment.

And yet, this person has the nerve to stand before a group of adults and say that because everyone in the nation isn’t kissing their asses after their spectacular failure, they might not be able to cooperate fully with a recovery. What a bunch of babies.

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