Wall Street: Think Pink? Drink!

President Bush has already accused Wall Street of it, so why not just go ahead?

Yep, that's right: A herd on the Street got drunk last night.

Colored-coded glow bracelets took over the bar at the Public House in New York, where recruiters (green), those collecting unemployment (pink), and those happily employed but hoping to make connections (blue) bore the economic crisis with $2 Buds and $4 gin cocktails at the first Wall Street Pink Slip Party, a networking event sponsored by DealBreaker, the Ronald McDonald House, and the Ladders.com, a job-seeking site aimed at landing searchers $100,000-a-year jobs.

The party was modeled after those that cropped up in the aftermath of the dot-com bust and the September 11 attacks and was designed to introduce job seekers to recruiters while raising money for charity.

Among the many unemployed, however, there was rarely a resume to be found:

"I'm here mostly for the $3 beers," said twentysomething Chris Dolan, who previously worked in the liquidity group of a Midtown firm he would rather not name. "I think this is the last place I'd find a job."

Not everyone shared his bearish attitude. Eric, 39, employed with the firm Jefferies & Co., pushed his opinion into the green, saying, "People are definitely using it to get a job. It's a great way to meet people in the industry."

Indeed, while there were a fair amount of pink bracelets strewn across the room, the majority of the turnout seemed to be made up of recruiters and reporters--perhaps a good sign for an industry that stands to lose 45,000 jobs by year's end, according to Governor David Paterson of New York.

Still, another employee of Jefferies took a more cautious approach: "I'm here socially," he acknowledged. "I don't think there's a whole lot of jobs out there, so why even come here with that pretense?"

Ryan Stroker, a former trader at Merrill Lynch, echoed those thoughts:

"I don't think there's a lot of opportunity here," he said while a recruiter friend hands him a drink. "But $2 beers are always great."

The beer-bearing friend looks at things a little more broadly. "The markets are in a state of crisis," he said, alluding to the windfall that fact has caused across American employment in general. "We're really trying to help."

The Street is sure to have helped someone with its hard-drinking ways last evening. The event held a steady crowd, which Ronald McDonald House director of development Rick Martin estimated donated a total of $10,000 to the children's charity.

"The media vilifies them," said Pink Slip Party coordinator Rachel Pine of the investment bankers and Wall Street professionals, "but they are very charitable," despite the rampant job-loss in their industry. "They'll still reach into their pockets for someone else."

And there are indeed other benefits, noted Joe Reagan, a Citigroup employee volunteering with the Ronald McDonald House: "It's social--that's why the news is here!"

Marisa Rindone