So Long To All That

Posted by John Carney, Sep 19, 2008, 4:00pm

Farewell DealBreaker.jpgI almost didn't answer the phone when DealBreaker came calling. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was sitting in a bar somewhere in Brooklyn. The phone was sitting on the bar next to a pack of smokes and a pint of Six Point. A glass of whiskey was in my hand. The phone buzzed, shimmying on the bar a bit. The girl I was drinking with gave me that look girls give you when you consider answering your phone in the middle of a conversation with them. That's probably why I answered it.

It was Elizabeth Spiers. She asked if I would be interested in writing for her new financial website. I wasn't working at all in those days, unless you count pretending to freelance and writing pieces of a novel once a week as working. I told her yes. When did she want me to start? Monday. And so the next day I became an ink-stained wretch, reporting the follies and foibles of Wall Street.

We've come a long way. In those early days--two and half years ago--the excesses bred by wealth and entitlement provided fodder for my writing. There was this government sponsored mortgage company that should have been delisted but got the New York Stock Exchange to bend the rules for it. Some kids engaged in the zaniest insider trading scheme ever. Another kid made a video about himself, proclaiming "Impossible Is Nothing." Steve Schwarzman threw himself a birthday party that would have made the Marie Antoinette blush. It was heady times but we knew, even then, that the end was coming.

Lately we've spent our time covering the collapse, the fall of the titans. Now Wall Street is busy shoring up its ruins, plotting the rebuild its empire. In the course of my two and a half years at DealBreaker I've watched the masters of the universe become welfare queens, tin cup in hand, begging for protection and subsidies from the government. Millionaires and billionaires who want taxpayers to rescue them from market processes. And it looks like we're going to do it.

Today is my last day at DealBreaker. I leave you in the capable hands of Bess Levin, my writing companion for the past 130 weeks or so, while I move on to other forums. Equity Private and a special surprise writer will be around to help out. You've been the best readers a writer could hope for. Thank you for your tips, your comments and for reading. Thanks, really, for going along with me all this way.

For those of you still on Wall Street or wondering what to do next, I'll offer a four pieces of advice. Remember that we'll get through this mess we're in, and we'll have great stories to tell about it for the rest of our lives. Never work in a job that makes you miserable. Love your family, help your friends. Buy drinks for strangers.

There's the closing bell. My work here is done.

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