All Those Years We Were Racing to Nowhere

For years, denizens of Wall Street have been living a frantic existence, sleeping, eating and otherwise living at the office, “because whatever it is that had to happen had to happen immediately, or yesterday,” writes Elizabeth Wurtzel in the Wall Street Journal. And what did this feverish “ER-approach” to finance yield? Twelve years of wealth lost in a matter of month.

"Anyone who liked sleeping, or dating, or occasionally walking his own golden retriever" had to get another job. “If you blow the whistle, it’s only to hail a taxi to take you away, because complaining just is not tolerated.” Big firms regret buying this security or striking that deal, but not the rapid-fire, tunnel-vision ethos that got them here. “No one has stated the obvious: the whole system is warped.” (More Wall Street stories.)