| Earlier today, as Robert reported, Governor Paterson unveiled a budget proposal with deep service cuts that will affect hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable New Yorkers. Last week, as was widely reported, the American automotive industry -- the source of wages for millions of working Americans -- was brought to the edge of extinction. And all of this is taking place against the backdrop of the worst recession since the Great Depression in a country where child poverty levels are half again as high as they are anywhere else in the first world.
So what popped up when I last visited the New York Times website? An article about the difficult psychological problems hedge fund managers are facing:
One patient, a hedge fund analyst, came to me recently in a state of great anxiety. "It's bad, but it might get a lot worse," I recall him saying. The anxiety was expected and appropriate: he had lost a great deal of his (and others') assets, and like the rest of us he had no idea where the bottom was. I would have been worried if he hadn't been anxious.
Over the course of several weeks, with the help of some anti-anxiety medication, his panic subsided as he realized that he would most likely survive economically.
But then something else emerged. He came in one day looking subdued and plopped down in the chair. "I'm over the anxiety, but now I feel like a loser." This from a supremely self-confident guy who was viewed by his colleagues as an unstoppable optimist.
He was not clinically depressed: his sleep, appetite, sex drive and ability to enjoy himself outside of work were unchanged. This was different.
The problem was that his sense of success and accomplishment was intimately tied to his financial status...
Good Lord, cry me a river. I don't blame this therapist for pocketing $300 an hour listening to some Brioni-clad clown blubber about the tragedy of watching his fortunes drift into the low seven figures, but why on earth would the Times publish this when there are people out there who are losing their jobs, losing their homes, losing their access to health care, all because of the miscalculations of people like his clients? |
