Place Your Bets: Will Mack Get A Bonus This Year?

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Updated:: Jan 14, 2019
Original:: Dec 8, 2008

CNBC bookie Charlie Gasparino is hearing the "betting" inside Morgan Stanley is leaning toward no. The board is said to be meeting today to decide whether or no the Lebanese Lothario will get anything this year. On the one hand, under Mack's stewardship, Morgan Stanley did not go under. On the other, Congress has its panties in a bunch over execs at any firms who received money getting jack. And then there's the whole Blankfein sandbagging everyone by coming forward last month and being all "nothing for me this year, it wouldn't be right" angle.

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Spend any amount of time working on Wall Street and you will soon learn that opportunities for stress abound, whether you're a first -year analyst getting reamed out for an extra space in a pitchbook or a hedge fund manager who just lost $1.2 billion in a matter of minutes. Those who are unable to manage the stress either 1) flame out or 2) become fat, irritable pricks whose change of having a heart attack on the job are high. Presumably, neither of those options sound appealing. But since the terms of the gig aren't changing, what's a ball of nerves like you to do? You might consider risking having the skin burned off your feet, or other such activities. According to Cornell professor Tony Simons, things like a 10,000 point drop in the Dow or seeing a headline flash across Bloomberg that your firm is being indicted-- things that you have no control over- become a lot less scary and cause for flipping out when you've been through worse. For instance, at the workshops and corporate training classes he teaches, Simons will have people do exercises like"firewalks" or have them "snap an arrow that sticks out of a wall with the point in the direction of their neck, by stepping forward and pushing into it." After that, dealing with stuff you previously thought was tough is pretty easy (sayeth one participant: "facing a loved one’s anger and negativity with calm, loving courage and not ducking away from it feels easier after breaking an arrow with the soft part of my throat"). One woman is reportedly planning to "get a firewalk tattoo to remind her of what she’s accomplished." For any employers out there thinking putting on their own Simons-esque workshop but desiring even better results, consider gathering up your employees and having them: * Commit to rollerblading down the Westside Highway to work for a year * Catch a bullet in their teeth * Go through the browser history of everyone at the SEC (no averting of eyes) * Play Spin the Bottle with Rick Santelli's favorite floor traders * Scale the Empire State Building without safety gear * Defend their position why HIG shouldn't spin off its property business to John Paulson on your company's internal sqawk box * Other

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