Barb’s Burblings

Each week, the Washington Post has in its Opinions section a “5 Myths About” feature, addressing myths about various topics. This week’s was about executive pay, and I was glad to see it. I’ve long been uncomfortable with the amount of vitriol levelled at people who work at financial companies, in large part because my dad works at a brokerage firm, so I grew up surrounded by people who worked in the financial world. Obviously, I understand why people are upset, but labeling it all as “Wall Street” and condemning the world of finance outright is foolish. In particular, this quote stood out to me:

Collectively speaking, Main Street is Wall Street’s client and generally has been very well taken care of. In this crisis, Wall Street professionals, through carelessness or errors, lost a lot more money than Main Street did, and probably more, proportionately, lost their jobs too. Wall Street didn’t benefit from the market declines, and only in the past few months has it recovered some of what it lost.

Word, yo. Don’t be haters.