So a lot of businesses that count on you throwing around your disposable incomes are worried that the minor issue of you no longer having incomes to throw might negatively affect their bottoms lines. Even those of you with jobs might be scaling back, they fear, on stuff like multi-million dollar apartments, lap dances, SeamlessWeb orders and Mike’s Hard Lemonade. One guy who doesn’t seem too stressed about the sitch on Wall Street becoming his problem is Eric Bedoucha, the chef at downtown bakery Financier Patisserie. He told the Times that in his experience, people always buy cake, it just depends on whether it’s to celebrate someone being hired (“They buy a ‘Welcome to our team!’ cake”) or fired (“They buy a ‘Good luck!’ cake”). Since the bakery opened in 2002, just after the last bubble burst, Bedoucha isn’t sure what happens re: eating your feelings in the case of large-scale layoffs. Know what we’re not sure about? This whole story. Seriously, who buys a hired cake? What does it say, exactly? “Congratulations, you now report to the guy who reports to the guy who reports to the guy who reports to John Mack!”? And more importantly, who buys a fired cake? What sort of grown men are consoled about the fact that they just got canned by eggs and flour? And, okay, let’s just pretend there are some people out there who buy these Fired Cakes; what kind of asshole requests that the thing says, “Good luck,” which is basically like writing, “Take care”? Are we wrong here? Is the half of Bear Stearns that’s in the process of being let go gorging themselves on these consolation prizes? Let us know (Blarney bakes).

With Economy Tied to Wall St., New York Braces for Job Cuts [NYT]