I was the wife of a Wall Street ‘Wolf’ | Hacker News Reader

I was the wife of a Wall Street ‘Wolf’

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22 pointswallflower13 comments

How is it that he was able to get out of jail and head straight to a multimillion dollar mansion? Was he not sued for everything he was worth? It doesn't really seem fair if crime does pay and you just have to do a few years in jail. I doubt the movie will really address the aftermath.

Kind of weird to think of Jonah Hill and Leo playing real people that had real lives. They must fucking love watching a movie that portrays them as such badasses.

Sound familiar?

It was all about getting these young hungry guys pumped up to become players. “Look how much money we make!” Danny was saying. “This could be yours someday, too!”

So I'm assuming you're saying this is similar to current tech-boom & silicon valley culture. If I'm wrong, ignore this whole comment.

I don't think what's going on these days is a scam. I see some valuable things coming out of tech these days. The dot.com crash of '99-2001 was not a system like today's. Back then I had classmates pulled out of school for 80k+ jobs just because they knew some HTML and Unix. $30k sign-on bonus, insane stock-options(that ultimately were worthless). Another company gave all new hired programmers a new car! A new personal car, never to be returned to the company. It was truly insane back then. Today other than some of these crazy valuations(snapchat $3B?), things at least still resemble sanity. In 1999-2001 there were companies that hired people to do literally nothing. Just sit there and look busy while the CEO brought in potential buyers. They'd look around the office and see how "cool & young & fresh & busy" everyone looked. CEO would give the most convincing sales pitch ever about how the internet was the new thing and they needed to get in on the ground-floor of e-commerce; small company bought out... everyone laid off, CEO gone... and it took the bigcorp 8+ months to figure out it had been fooled.

I don't know how many people here on HN are old enough to remember the first dot.com bubble but it was nuts-&-bananas. Just a circus; not unlike the recent housing-crisis. That's just not what's happening in today's tech "bubble"[1]. At least, not nearly to the degree it was back then.

1. If this is a bubble, it's the strongest bubble I've ever seen. If it pops it's really gonna devastate a whole bunch of people.

$30k sign-on bonus — Facebook gives $30k signing bonuses to undergrads.

valuations(snapchat $3B?), things at least still resemble sanity. — They use that $3B valuation to cash out $10 million per founder so they never have to create value for employees (also see Groupon and Zynga insider trading shenanigans).

Just sit there and look busy while the CEO brought in potential buyers. — Many companies today admit to doing that. Just bring in friends to sit around and look busy while your potential investors tour the "office" that appeared out of nowhere yesterday. Palantir talked about it in a startup school presentation (but he also made jokes about killing and/or raping babies, so he's not exactly stable).

nuts & bananas. — I'm hungry now.

not nearly to the degree it was back then. — Back then, everybody thought they could buy a mansion when their IPO popped six months after founding. Today, success is more isolated towards the top end instead of the possibility of success through the entire spectrum. It took Twitter six years to get line-level employees anything while the executives were doing just fine cashing out along the way.

ok, now I'm scared....

"As for me, eight months pregnant and hardly in the mood for a party, I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the simple guy I’d first married, whose idea of a good time had once been grilling in the backyard with a beer in his hand."

Why do they all go into deep denial? I bet she was sewing her own clothes, and buying at discount stores. Ladies--just be honest. You took the money, and started to expect it. You really, don't care how it's made. How much will she get for her pity book?

The victim badge is powerful. I wish there was a greater effort to hold spouses etc accountable, they are rarely innocent, and allowing the whole "I had no choice" charade just perpetuates the attitude that this is an okay defense.

It really is a bit one sided. Eventough she generally did no wrong, I strongly doubt that she had no idea of what was going on. I mean if your husband hands you one contract after another you should at some point at least read through them.

Not at all. My first wife not only didn't know what I really did for a living ("Oh...he does something in IT..."), she didn't give two shits as long as the money kept coming. And if signing a piece of paper and not asking questions meant more money coming, she would have happily done it without a second thought. I can completely relate to this level of willful ignorance.

Why did you marry someone like that?

I didn't. Somewhere along the line, however, she became that person.

When you have 3 kids to take care of and have no background in finance/accounting/etc. do you really want to start getting into THOSE details too? Why would you doubt your husband, the man who's supposed to take care of you until the death do you part?

...Right?

This is the reason I don't mess with the stock market anymore.

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