"They Look at Money as a Proxy for Aggression"

Blogger "Chew your grouse" has a gimlet eye for finance types:

The publisher of Trader and DealMaker magazines stands at the podium with the "Top 100 Traders of 2006" issue, including the guy from Centaurus in Houston on the other side of the Amaranth trade who made $2 billion for the year. "Can you imagine what that feels like?" she asks, awestruck. It was pretty pathetic to see a grown human -- who herself made surely reasonable money -- get excited like this, and the mostly guy crowd tittered a little as well at the mere thought of it.

The problem is that his attitude isn't going to make him a gazillionaire. Indeed, the very fact that he's not pulling down the megabucks already is pretty much enough to disqualify him from the kind of job which will make him squillions in the future. Here he is talking to a headhunter:

The guy is like, "so how much did you make last year," and I tell him, and he's like "ummmm, errrr. Well, that's a problem, cuz they're gonna look at that and say: if he likes money, why hasn't he figured out a way to earn more? This is a job that offers the potential to earn seven figures eventually, and they want people who want that." And I'm like "I'm a friggin Slavist already, gimme a break." And he's like "They look at money as a proxy for aggression."

There is a certain beauty to the logic, it must be said. To get rich, you have to be aggressive. If you're aggressive, you'll be rich. So if you're not rich, you can't be aggressive. Ergo, to get rich, you have to be rich.

Which at least means the rest of us can stop worrying, I guess.