Something's wrong? And not just on Wall Street.

There is something wrong with me.

I am actually deriving this perverse pleasure seeing the financial world collapse. And not because I resent it in any way.



Matter of fact, it is quite the contrary. I believe if you can make a living selling paper for paper, taking long and short positions on them, calling them something fancy like a derivative, good on you. I believe in Wall Street. I don't necessarily agree with the backlash against, say, short selling. And I would have markets deregulated than the other way round. The more cushion the Fed gives, the better it is. And I literally cannot stand John McCain or Barack Obama be so shallow on the campaign trail as they talk about greed, and the how apparently how Main Street has been sold short by Wall Street, as paychecks for CEO's have gone fatter. All while Joe Bloggs works three shifts to afford healthcare for his ailing mom.

But why this urge to check on Nikkei 225 before I sleep? Read Floyd Norris in the New York Times, browse the new Journal, get the European view in something like FT, and then look at slideshows of Wall Street bankers with sullen faces and hot bodies outside, say Lehman, in the Daily Intel? Why would I look down upon you if you did not know who Chris DesBarres was? Why does it get my tongue wagging when on Bloomberg, they literally put "the worst since the Great Depression.." on repeat. All day long.

Ken calls it the quarter- life crisis.

I reckon it is a sitcom like sitcoms dream to be, with each character with a story, and each story with a lot of such characters. Give me Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Bob Diamond, Blankfein and a certain W., who realizes rather Fed's billions of dollars than a speech that lasts more than a 120 seconds to cuddle a country in distress, over say, Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgely or a Chace Crawford. Or just that I am about twenty blocks, or two stops on the Pelham Express (4,5) to the Financial District in a city called New York.

Or maybe it is the quarter- life crisis. Because it is a Thursdsay night, but I am sitting with a Walgreens pint of orange juice, still not over Floyd Norris's post on short selling, and there is no place I rather be.

I might want to get better orange juice though.

Or maybe because I had no idea who Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgely or a Chace Crawford were till I looked Gossip Girls on IMDb.