Those in the one percent apparently have feelings too. And on the eve of Christmas, the biggest wish coming out of Wall Street is that others would play nice and stop hating them because of their success.
“This attack is destructive,” John A. Allison IV of BBT Corp. Banks tells Bloomberg. Those assaults, says Allison, shouldn’t be waged at the one percent because they are successful; after all, that success came as a result of such hard work as foreclosing on the thousands of Americans and then benefiting off of their misfortunate.
“Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive,” Allison says.
If those thousands of protesters rallying for a chance in American society to reverse the widening inequality gap between the few rich and the many poor are bothering you, think of how all those billionaires must feel.
“If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit,” billionare Paychex Inc. founder Tom Golisano adds to the news agency.
America’s wealthy elite are finally sick of all the demonstrations, name calling and not-so-nice words directed at their wallets and the corrupt conduct that made them oh-so fat. Frankly, says the one percent, it ain’t all that fair.
“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it,” JPMorgan Chase Co. CEO Jamie Dimon told an audience at a conference last month. Sure, Dimon raked in $23 million in 2010 alone, but he really isn’t all that evil, he says. Yeah, yeah, so his company managed to profit immensely off of the bankrupting of the rest of America, but do you really have to point the finger?
For the 99 percent, absolutely. Such has been the agenda behind the growing Occupy Wall Street campaign, which recently celebrated its three-month anniversary. But it’s not even America’s rich going after those pesky protesters, either. In the upcoming video game adaption of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6, Occupy-esque protesters are portrayed as filthy, violent hostage-taking terrorists. The television program Law and Order attempted to co-opt the movement as well, trying to paint a not-so-pretty picture of the movement by putting Manhattan protest-hub Zuccotti Park in a recent episode, a move which they later withdrew.
For the one percent, those cries, no matter how harsh, are being waged by the envious and ill informed. Anti-movement support coming from the mainstream isn’t helping either, and some even have words a bit harsher.
Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot Inc., says those that don’t have the same wealth as him don’t mean all that much. Granted, there aren’t a lot of other Americans valued at $1.5 billion, but according to Marcus, “Who gives a crap about some imbecile?”
“They deserve what they’re going to get,” said Marcus recently, reports Bloomberg News. “Are you kidding me?” he asked.
For many, it’s no joke. Thousands have been arrested so far while protesting in the Occupy movement and several have been injured as a result of police force. Still, that doesn’t seem to prove that they know what they’re doing, say the wealthy elite. According to the one percent, the other chunk of America needs to learn a thing about manners if it wants to excel in the game.
“You’ll get more out of me if you treat me with respect,” adds Omega Advisers’ Leon Cooperman.
You heard it, folks. Treat others how you’d like to be treated. So, please, take those protest signs and get out already. You’re making Lower Manhattan look cheap.
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