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From The Times

September 17, 2008

After Lehman Brothers: desperate City wives

The real-life stresses and strains of being married to an investment banker forms the backdrop to Katherine Bucknell's bestselling US novel Canarino; Here she explains what the repercussions are for the families caught up in the latest financial meltdown

Katherine Bucknell

My nine-year-old asked me at breakfast on Monday morning: “What is the economy?” What a day to find out. I struggled to describe a kind of weaved knot in which every thread is connected to another thread, establishing clearly that we are all in this together. If you made a lot of money in the City, did you sew it up in a mattress? Buy a farm where you could live, grow your own food and educate your children yourself? Or did you invest it - in the City?

The size of a banker's pile of money is like the size of anything else in a macho environment: you need the biggest one to show that you are good at what you do. The pile does not necessarily reflect personal greed, it reflects the need to be the best banker. It reflects how long and hard you have worked. One man I know who worked at Lehman Brothers accumulated stock in the company for decades and never got around to diversifying his portfolio. This week he saw his net worth drop from a paper high of about $100 million (£56 million) some months ago to virtually nothing.

Nobody at Lehman Brothers will be making a pile of money any more, real or virtual. Nor do they have an income. Or an office, a BlackBerry, a plane ticket to an important meeting out of town, a driver waiting downstairs. In Chelsea there were anguished shouts heard on the pavements at 6.30am on Monday, and people were breaking down in tears in Starbucks. A few Lehman employees heard the news over the weekend and collected their belongings on Sunday night so they wouldn't have to face the press.

Many of them are workaholics, accustomed to being under pressure for 18 hours a day. We hear that they are frantically looking for work, and that a lucky few are being recruited by former competitors. But how many jobs can there be in this environment? Adjusting to being out of work will be hard for the rest of them, adjusting to being out of luck even harder. Their self-esteem may now be lower than their net worth. They have no place to go but home, to tell the family.

And when they do get home, how long can they afford to stay if the rent is high or a mortgage outstanding? What about the builders remodelling the kitchen? The nanny and the cleaner? How will they pay for the private school? The private health insurance? The car, the clubs, the tennis lessons? Dining out, theatre, opera? Christmas presents, holidays, charities? The accumulating pile, which to a banker serves as a report card, means many different things to those who help to spend it and to those on whom it is spent.

For every vanished pile there will be crying children, an angry spouse, unemployed builders and domestic help, goods left on shop shelves, flats and houses available to rent or buy, empty restaurants, and villages in Africa that don't get their new water pump after all. Some Lehman wives feel that their husbands were lied to by the firm; they were encouraged to stay, to reinvest, to “engage their passion”, as the Lehman Brothers careers website still forlornly urges. Those wives are wondering how their husbands could stay loyal for so long despite all the warning signals. Why didn't they devise a Plan B?

There may also be divorces, serious depressions, alcoholism, suicide, a rise in crime, and a great deal of crushing boredom. That thing called the future, which we all hold in the back of our mind as a time to which we can look forward when our efforts finally come to fruition, when we will get what we hope and work for, our prayers answered, our dreams fulfilled - that future is no longer a shining promise pulling Lehman employees through a hard day. It's just a bleak, endlessly rainy summer. Some will grieve over lost possibilities for a long time.

Here's what is running through the head of one good friend - still employed - who has worked in the City for more than 20 years. Can he salvage his career, or is there a second career that he can start now? More importantly, what has he been doing for the past 20 years anyway? If his achievements can be wiped out in a day, or a few weeks, was it all just a paper game?

Funnily enough, he never felt rich. “It's a myth that people who work in the City are rich,” he says. “If you pay your taxes and spend at anywhere near the rate of your colleagues, you don't make enough to just walk away without a drastic and painful change in your life.”

City people, like everyone else who works hard for a living, postpone from year to year that moment when they feel that they can say, with a sigh of satisfaction, “Now my pile is big enough. I can stop and do whatever I want”.

This friend is still educating his children - one reason why many of us postpone personal desires - but now he is even asking himself what his children's education will prove to be for. Will they want to pursue a career in finance like his? Absolutely not.

And we are all being told that there is worse to come. The mood at Merrill Lynch is one of palpable relief; they are out of the front line. But other banking and insurance giants are tottering and may not withstand the continuing turmoil; thousands of smaller fry are on the brink. London's new unemployed are now leaving their offices, hunched over cardboard file boxes containing the pathetic clutter that is deemed personal.

One single mother I know - an American lawyer - took less than 24 hours to gather financial advice from her circle of well-

informed City friends and move her UK cash into gilts, her US cash into Treasuries, her stock market holdings out of institutional titles and into her own name. There are plenty of e-mails circulating that advise friends to buy physical gold and silver; oil, gas and copper; notes of banks that cannot be allowed to fail; currency. Dump the US dollars as quick as you can. This kind of detailed advice makes plenty of people feel panicky. Moving assets fast means accepting the status quo and probably realising big losses. “Realise” is a good word. Most of us need to linger in disbelief for a while, or at least mull over what has happened.

Wives who don't work in the City, or don't work at all, are in a tense waiting game. They may have long ago ceded the management - and even understanding - of investments to their husbands, but by now they have examined and re-examined the lists in newspapers and on the internet of banks reported to be in the biggest trouble. Maybe they have allowed their hearts to flutter with guarded hope when they see that their spouse's bank isn't on one, or isn't near the top. But they know that the stock price is way down, that the options can't be shed. They also know that Lehman has countless counterparties in every commitment it made.

They know that the trouble has to spread. They take some comfort from thinking “we're all in this together”, and are made passive by musing that there is nothing they can do anyway. The institutions are monoliths; the size of the problem is overwhelming. The only real response they can make is psychological adjustment - that is their job for this autumn. Some may fail to do this. A few years ago I heard a Notting Hill mother of four confiding to a friend at a cocktail party that if her financier husband couldn't get her an apartment in the most sought-after part of their building in Manhattan, instead of the less fashionable section, she was going to dump him.

Status-crazed babes may as well seek rich prey outside the world of investment banking, hedge funds, and perhaps finance altogether. Far from planning to walk out on their husbands for letting them down (where would they find another husband doing better just now? If they had wanted a divorce, the right time was last spring when there were still assets), wives will now close ranks. They are thinking about how they will do right by their children without the resources they have long had at their command, and which they expected would grow bigger.

Even as they hope they won't have to, they are making plans to economise. City wives are tougher and more practical than a lot of people realise. They are not celebrities. They are managers - plenty of them once worked in the City themselves. Economy also means home management, and already they will be preparing for some very tough cuts, though not all their decisions will make sense to outsiders.

Which holiday should they cancel first? Skiing, because it's the shortest, coldest and most expensive. How soon can they get out from under the lease on the country house - or, if the penalties for breaking it are too great, should they spend all their holidays there while the lease lasts?

Who can they let go from the staff? Most would rather do without the nanny than without the cleaner. With any luck the cleaner likes children anyway and will help out in a pinch. If there is a cook, she goes before the nanny. The cleaner also knows how to roast a chicken and wash up. Forget the garden altogether - expect to see a lot of weeds as the crisis worsens - although the unemployed may take some comfort in doing the gardening themselves. Shopping ... they have been meaning to cut down on shopping for years. Haircuts, though, they can't do without.

Experienced soldiers can hold their ground under a hail of fire, raw recruits will break and run. I know of one talented young man, educated at the best private schools and a fine university, who spent his first working year at Lehman Brothers. After he emptied his desk on Monday, he broke and ran as only the young know how - straight for the pub. Did he know that's where the recruitment agents are now conducting business?

I feel sorriest for those City workers in their thirties or forties, who are still driven and ambitious, who have not yet had their turn to run the show or accumulate a decent-sized pile, and have young families. Families with young children cannot make adjustments quickly.

Where do you go, to whom do you turn, when suddenly you have nothing? So many of us are hoping that we won't have to face that question. But we should also hope that we will see some courage, calmness, and maybe even a little self-sacrifice - like the generations who raised us on far less material wealth than we have now. Isn't it time that we ate more leftovers, wore hand-me-down clothes, drove our cars a few years longer, gave our neighbours a lift, played cards or a game of catch with our children?

Friends who lent us a sofa four years ago because they were buying all new furniture have asked for it back. They have been building a mansion in the country; luckily for them, it was completed before the current troubles. But it seems that they can't afford to furnish it. It is not the ideal moment for me to buy a new sofa, so at our house a few people will be sitting on the floor.

Yes, I am already looking for a silver lining. I am painfully aware of how grossly America out-consumes the rest of the world, and feel guilty about this even though I have lived in Britain for nearly 25 years. When Al Gore first circled the globe, advising us to change our ways before we burnt up the planet, I wondered why people couldn't commit to a stricter regime. I gave up blow-drying my hair for a whole year. Yet we have gone on having not only more than our share, but more than we could pay for.

How did we become so undisciplined? What allowed us to go on saying to ourselves “you deserve it” when we knew full well that people elsewhere were ill or starving or working in sweatshops? Well, now it's time for the guillotine. It's time for the chop. The worst of it is that those who will suffer most probably had least hand in creating the mess.

But perhaps we will all rediscover some of the kinds of wealth that cannot be measured in monetary terms. If this is our Great Crash, we will need to draw on the strengths we often attribute to our parents and grandparents to get us through.

Tanya Byron: Helping the mighty who fall

There has been a lot of research into the impact of unemployment on mental health, and it shows that up to 40 per cent of unemployed people suffer some sort of psychological distress, ranging from insomnia and mild anxiety to clinical depression. This demonstrates that unemployment causes poor psychological health, rather than resulting from it.

In this crisis, where the numbers are so large and the unemployment was sudden, some psychologically healthy people will be affected, and their mental health will suffer.

Cases can be severe. I once saw a woman whose husband had hanged himself after he was made unemployed. He was a sane, rational, bright young man with no history of mental illness. But employment does not just provide money - a job underpins who you are and gives you an identity. When that goes, life can feel helpless. This husband wrote his wife a suicide note in which he said that he was of no use to her, that she was better off without him.

Most cases are not so extreme, but employment is part of the social fabric of all our lives. It offers a structure to our day, it enables interaction and relationships outside our family, it enforces activity, and - especially at the level of a high-flying banker - it offers a feeling of power and status.

Research on the impact of unemployment on families shows that there is often a big impact on children. Their schoolwork suffers; they can become withdrawn or difficult.

The impact on a child depends on his or her age. It is always important to be as honest as one can, while focusing on the certainties of the future as much as possible, and highlighting the positives. For example, if Daddy is going to be at home more often, that means Daddy can do the school collection run. If the child is older, parents need to offer reassurance that they will be included in the decisions for the future. But for children of all ages, a parent should make clear what has been lost and what will remain the same.

For wives - and I have seen this a lot among upper-middle-class women who belong to the type of nuclear traditional families that many of those who worked at Lehman Brothers will have built - there is often anger. Many feel that they have built a reciprocal partnership with their husband. He is more than a father, friend and lover, he is also their business partner. But he has let the side down. One wife said to me that she felt her recently unemployed banker husband had turned into her third child. She was angry with him and he felt unsupported by her, and so the complication begins.

If a family is functioning well, is strong, and its members have built a good relationship founded on more than money and status, they will cope well with the lifestyle changes that accompany the sudden loss of a job.

Losing your job is like a bereavement; there will be a period of mourning. People panic - and they need to implement a strategy as soon as possible. Doubtless a higher rate of unemployment will be accompanied by increased activity in the financial counselling sector, whereby families can be taught to construct short, medium and long-term contingency plans.

If nothing else, this enforces a sense of normality, continuation and control - which is vital when you feel that you have lost everything else.

Oh, so SAD!! These SUPERB financiers, they kept all their
money in Lehman. If ONLY they had had some well publicized example (ENRON) of the peril of their stunning greed and incompetence!!! BOO HOO!

Perhaps their loss is a comment on their real skill and value to society...

Buck, Seattle,

They're worried about being losing their jobs, but not worried about sacking their cleaners and nannies....

Mary, Wirral, UK

The first year graduate starting salary at Lehman Brothers was £50,000. God knows how much the others got. We can all calm down, nobody will go hungry. They will all find another job in time.

Yanne, london, uk

I'm really sorry You've lost everything. But this time try to find a job where You will actually help people instead making huge profit out of someones misery; and Your life (and yourself) will change to better!

Natalija, N. Falls, Canada

'Oh darling, how will Annabelle and Trixie cope without their riding and ballet lessons?'

RB, Aberdeen,

Hey- they could always get jobs as maths teachers- that would solve one problem...

Broome, London, UK

I think some people have neglected the great sacrifices this woman has made. After all, she didn't blow dry her hair for A WHOLE YEAR!! My heavens, let's get this woman a Nobel Peace Prize quickly!

Ginger, London,

Justification for salaries many times those of other equally demanding none city professions was that these city jobs were insecure and could go tits up at short notice. Many of these people lived imprudently (like they worked!) are arrogant and driven by naked greed and ostentatious consumption

Sarah Galbraith, Ellisfield, UK

I must say, I agree whole heartedly with the authors sentiments. Why, only the other day, I had to fire my chauffeur, maid, au pair (pity that- she had cracking legs), belgian chef and thai sex-slave. It really is frightfully difficult to live on less than £500k a year.

Gordon Knight-Frank, London,

The first will be last and the last will be first!!

virginia, Brisbane, Australia

I do feel genuinely sorry for the cleaners, security & secretarial staff, etc at Lehmans, but do you seriously expect us to have sympathy for those whose idea of suffering is going without the nanny & gardener & foregoing the skiing trip? In the real world, people are losing their HOMES. Wake up!

Stephen McLean, London, UK

I always wondered who were the low life scums that during and after Soviet revolution of 1917 hated, killed and tormented formerly better-off people and their families. After reading the comments I understood it at last. It is distressing, though, to see the attitude in free countries, UK and US.

Yura, Hamden, CT, US

Welcome to the real world. Bankers deserve no sympathy and they are certainly not going to get it

Martin, London,

Those who are successful in a non-random way will be able to land on their feet and do even better in the years ahead. Unfortunately for most investment bankers, etc. on Wall St. and in the City, what fortuna has given them so lavishly, she can just as easily take away! Here today, gone tomorrow!

Peter Adam, Chevy Chase MD, USA

At least this economy crunch is killing first those investment bankers who produce that.

No mercy, no sympathy for those who played with the money of third parties, enjoyed huge bonuses, and at the end brought the firms and the shareholders money to the ruin.

Alex Gómez, Cambridge, MA

A heartening (but exaggerated) article. Most forget that banks employ clerks, cleaners..and you don't have to be able to afford a home,let alone staf,to lose 40% of income to taxes.
Be honest. If you had the chance, you'd have bought into the lifestyle. This lack of humanity stems from bitter envy

Tim, London,

"Which holiday should they cancel first?"
"Which staff should they let go first?"
"Can they afford the upkeep on their second homes?"

Oh my aching heart, how it doth bleed for thee. Some of us don't do this sort of job not because we can't, but because we know there's more to life than avarice.

John Tee-Rhodes, Manchester,

These folks will have to cope. That's it. Just like the miners, steelworkers, car assembly workers etc. whose jobs went with progress and consolidation in their chosen industries. The banking sector is going through the adjustment that the industries they relied and preyed on went through years ago.

Chris, Shannon, ireland

Hate to say it, but those of us in the industrial Midwest have been suffering this sort of uncertainty for years now, and no one on Wall Street gave a damn. Concerning your troubles, I have to say: Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

Doug , Detroit, USA

I can't believe all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from these pathetic banking staff. When ship yards or coal mines closed there were protests by the workers but the got on with life. I hope these people will learn a lesson from this one now they're in the world of reality.

Mike, Alicante, Spain

This article is a deliberate wind up and we've all fallen for it. Obviously no one in their right minds would have any sympathy for investment bankers who have been instrumental in their own downfall by their own greed. It is a deliberate attempt to goad us and it has worked a treat

Stuart, Auckland, NZ

Heck,
I traveled the whole Eastern seaboard in 2003 and cynically laughed when I saw all these incredible gated communities being built up. I had pondered who was going to afford all those mortgage payments. I had derided Greenspan latest reappointment calling him the greatest fool that ever lived.

patrick salbaing, Montreal, Canada

This article isn't extreme or stringly worded, but it is completely misguided. It is a bit sickening how you, and the masses who you clearly represent, have got your priorites so utterly wrong. I have no sympathy, except for the many will never get a grasp of reality. You haven't lost anything.

James, Zürich, Switzerland

Why feel sorry for these folk? They were all complicit in the same game. No one in banking makes anything solid or useful. Lifting a profit by clever moves with other peoples hard earned cash is not a proper job. The money does not belong to the bankers but is guarded by them on trust. Ha ha. Joke.

Colin, Carmarthen, United Kingdom

Love the comments from bitter City types about 'working hard': what do they think the rest of us do? Just because we aren't paid 6-fig salaries it doesn't me we do nothing! I'm in medical research - 6-fig salaries are unheard of. Yet 6-fig is average in the City - to do what? Destroy the economy?

MB, Edinburgh,

People don't realise how fragile their lives are, your circumstances can, and do change drastically in less than an hour.
They were lucky to get jobs that gave them a good lifestyle for a time; if they didn't put any away then more fool them.
Long hours & study are required for jobs paying far less

Bob, Sittingbourne, UK

None of these people were concerned when their fellow elites in government gutted the economy of the middle class with NAFTA. They reaped huge profits from selling the shares of the corporations that moved their operations to third world countries at the expense of US jobs. NO sympathy here!

Stephen Garland, Atlanta, USA

It's hard to feel sorry for the bankers and the bankers' wives...

laura, london, UK

Welcome to the poor and middle class world! It sucks don't it.

We work hard just to give it away to the Goverenment and the upper class. I hope it all ends revenage of the Poor is apon you the curse is in reverse!!!!!!!!!!!

Let Our people go!

Wilma, Ky, USA

"Where do you go.... when suddenly you have nothing". Yours is a strange concept of 'nothing'. Downsizing to a lesser degree of wealthy is not 'nothing'. No food, no shelter, no school, no love is 'nothing'. Get real.

R. Jenna, London,

All the people who are being so nasty.... have you fools not realised what it means for everyone? it is not just the bankers.... the knock on effects are going to hit everyone. My receptionist daughter lost her job. £21,000 a year. I guess she 'deserves' it. Huh?

M Williams, London,

Being a practical person, rather than drone on about just desserts and culpability, I'll give some practical advice for the "anointed" amongst the recently unemployed at the banking houses. Here it is: They can sell all those toys they acquired through their machinations. At 5 cents on the dollar.

Al Klein, Philadelphai, USA

Complex paper investments (added value?), greed (ambition?) & lack of restriction (government?) led us (all?) to this point where we realise we have created a false economy.
Yes, now we are all looking at the "price of everything" and ironically discovering it's real "value"...

Brian, Bilbao, Spain

Common sense says you should put aside at least enough money to keep you afloat for six months to a year, whether you live on a little or a lot. I can't feel sorry for people earning mad money & not saving any of it or diversifying their portfolios.
Seems to me none of it was "real" money anyway.

Liz, Chicago, USA

This is a frivolous and grotesque article. The writer seems to lack any awareness that the comfortable lifestyle alluded to - employing cleaners, nannies and cooks to handle the dirty work - might be questionable. The lazy assumption is that to aspire to live in this way is really quite OK.

Dunbankin, Brighton, England

I was just wondering Will they City wives will stop school runs in and shopping in their monstrous 4x4 trucks. Its complete myth and PR from City folks. If whole economy is built around "City" that’s definitely wrong with whole economy it self.

pavan, dublin, ireland

The unemployed people , not selected for jobs because of increasing reservation %age,must be asked with dignity ,are they competent to solve such problems?

Rjn Lotus, Patiala, INDIA

If they can't look after their own money why should we trust them with ours.... no sympathy what so ever... welcome to the real world

martin, lyon,

Pathetic. you are the people who brought this devastation on yourselves and the rest of the world and now you seek sympathy. Go and find a real job somewhere and see how the other half live. Banks should be non profit organisations- not gamblers with hard earned savers money to make you huge profits

jbentley, loule, portugal

Oh, how fortunate we were to have lost everything in the dot.com meltdown in the States back in 2001. Cheer up, guys! There IS life after bankruptcy and you WILL survive - and perhaps even flourish. One thing I can promise - you'll find out what really matters in life and what doesn't. Good luck...

Patricia Marin, Washington DC, USA

Linda, London

When the pits closed it was people pressing the financial based economy that said it's just capitalism at work and that times move on. There was no demand for the miners so they had to go.

Well, guess what. These bankers are no longer in demand and the irony tastes oh so sweet.

Jamie, Halifax, West Yorkshire

Want a Job?
Get a page on LINKEDIN.
Seriously. I'm looking now!!

Recruiter, London,

This is a sick and twisted article. When a member of the upper-middle classes points out that stress, divorce, alcoholism, illness and depression are the consequences financial hardship or ruin, I wonder if they now finally have some empathy with the mass of normal working people in this country.

Chris, edinburgh, scotland

This article makes me feel a little sick. My family had to rebuild their lives after fleeing a politically troubled country with barely any possessions. I can assure you they did not sit in Starbucks in Chelsea weeping into a latte. A little perspective please is necessary.

M, London,

They have a choice over whether to spend their money or save for the inevitable crash. Why should anyone be sympathetic if they chose to spend? As for earning their money, aren't the highest earners the same people who caused the crash with their bright ideas for making more money?

Kath, Yorkshire, UK

this all started from championing the ambitions of poor people to own their own home. we should not pander to the aspirations of the working class in home ownership anymore. look where it has taken us.

james, london,

I feel sorry for most of these people and hope they can cope with the impending doom and gloom, especially the huge number of support staff. A lot of the negative comments could be coming from those who have witnessed the behaviour of higher earners in the City bars looking down on the rest of us!

GSW, London, England

What do they want, sympathy ?? - It's barely the Miner's Crisis, these arrogant spivs have got too greedy & gambled their way out of their own £300,000 jobs, pity. The stock market is concerned purely with individual wealth & not in benefitting the economy as a whole.

tony, macclesfield, uk

I know Lehmans people in Spain aren't worried about nannies and the like. They're not amongst the small number of big earners. Like the vast majority, they'll be worrying about housing, school and food like I was within weeks of being out of contract in the past. Not earning enough for a buffer.

Mark, London & Madrid,

Some of the trophy wives will adapt, and move on to other guys with money. Some of the older ones, especially those with kids, will have to downsize their lifestyles.

Some of the men will get new jobs, some will not, and some will have nervous breakdowns when their wives leave the

Ed, London,

These so-called money managers appear to be clueless when it comes to managing money. What on earth did they learn in school or during those countless 18-hour days? A show of hands, please, on how many saved money, diversified, and lived beneath their means.

Lynne, Aliso Viejo, CA, US

You have my sympathy. But it's sickening to hear that the idea of wealthy bankers is a 'myth'.

Machismo, rather than greed, is a laughable excuse for all the begging and pressure for deregulation - only to take this extra freedom and responsibility and cause ruin with impossible, stupid lending.

RM, London,

I have little sympathy for people working in finance & other results orientated environments who are unable 2 plan for a economic downturn or other change - irrespective of how misled the team at Lehman's believe they were. If you play, you play to win & lose, these are core City principles...

sasha, london,

Now you have time on your hands please read about how it came about that the UK now has whats called a housing crisis, also how the whopping increases in the price of food at something called a supermarket happened. Welcome to the real UK.

Greg, Sydney, Australia

"How grossly America out-consumes the world"... I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that America out-produces the world, accounting, as it does, for 30pc of all economic activity in the world.

Nigel, Warrington, England

Ladies... you failed to diversify your investment, possibly it would have been wiser to lease than buy?

David, Beijing, China

A well written article. Yes, bankers were greedy and yes, they will find out how us mere mortals live - I do not wish anyone unemployed ill will.

What's happened to those at the top who were laid off at Lehman's is rather like an ironic reverse of the movie "The Pursuit of Happiness"

Daniel, Clifton, USA

The bitterness on here is vile! Is it so wrong to work your socks off and make something of yourself? Is it easier to finance your holiday from hard labour as a banker/support staff or a remortgage on your house you can't afford when interest rates go up? Who insists they deserve help first - Guess?

J, Trowbridge, UK

To quote somebody else (from the comments section about how to rent out your expensive house when you find you can't sell it)

"I am clearly not rich enough to read this paper".

The whole article has a "Let them eat cake" tone to it.

Graeme M, Brockley, London,

There is no justification for the obscene salaries/bonuses some of these people were paid. Police, firefighters, paramedics and ambulance crew put their lives on the line on an almost daily basis for a paltry salary and little respect or thanks. PSF, no sympathy; lawyers helped create this mess

A Turner, Sydney,

Perhaps Quint Studer best summarises the core of job satisfaction-Purpose, worthwhile work and making a difference. In seeking these a whole new world might open up for some of these people.

Time Kerruish, Dunedin, New Zealand

Anyone who is sniggering: when was the last time you worked 110 hours in a week to provide the best for your family? They live privileged lives because they have worked incredibly hard to get where they are. Would you scorn sacked doctors out of jealousy if they worked longer hours for more pay?

Tom, Coventry,

The local press just reported a case where a woman is likely to get prison for benefit fraud of £13k or so. How many of these ex-bankers who have defrauded the taxpayer of billions and thrown the whole economy into a mess will also be going to prison? I thought so, none of them...

Steve, Brighton,

Eight million people are starving to death in Ethiopia.

Germ, melbourne, australia

Given how ruthless investment bankers are and how greedy and self centred their lives, it is going to be interesting to watch them viciously fight for survival like cornered rats. Perhaps somewhere the odd few will find enlightenment and start to understand the world in other than materialist terms

don, Sydney, Australia

I had to give up work that I loved, because I developed lung disease which made it difficult to breath, the drugs for which mean I can no longer carry out my hobby (calligraphy) sometimes I can't even hold a cup steady because of the shakes.
over years I adapted to my new life.
Do the same.

Howard , Basildon, England

As a lawyer who arranges CDO deals I can tell you its very hard work. I left school with no exams and worked really hard as a mature student. I built up debts of around 70k to become a solicitor and eventually got a job with a bank. I was sold the same dream as you. The envy and spite is revolting.

PSF, london, United Kingdom

I have no pity for the bankers, they know better than any one how to cover their asses financially, if they didn't then, too bad.

perhaps they'll have to spend less money for a while or downgrade to smaller houses and cars, or god forbid get a job that's not in banking for a while.

Tom, Brisbane, Australia

These bankers have had it too good too long. In my experience to quote oscar wilde 'they know the price of everything but the value of nothing'. Lets hope this brings us back to basics and these men realise that having family and friends is having true wealth!

lh, Mansfield,

If people didn't keep breeding there would be no suffereing in sweatshops. I do not feel guilty that countries whose people have 10 kids each don't have enough.
As for the "poor" people of Lehman, they knew to divest, and the ones on the streets are fools.

Gus Chyba, Newport Beach, California, USA

The stupidity of the bankers is incredible to me. If they were smart, they would have hoarded all the money instead of blowing it. What kind of a fool blows his money on junk trying to compete with other fools and then cries when the game is up - something that happens in every recession?

Adam, London,

Is this a sick joke?

Robert Ward, London,

"Research on the impact of unemployment on families shows that there is often a big impact on children."

Like the 2.9 million children currently living below the povery line.

Their hearts will be pouring that City Wives have to give up their skiing holidays...

Simon, Sydney, Australia

The question about where was the sympathy for the miners strikes a chord with me. Born in a mining village, seeing the region shut down, I moved South, and am now a banker. However, I do not recognise this picture of us. In general, we have all saved hard, knowing it could all end any day. No staff.

John, London,

I have family who are unemployed. I decided to sacrifice. I worked my backside off at university, post-graduate level, entry level jobs, 16 hour days. I worked hard in the gym so I wouldn't be fat like them and smoking 30 fags a day. My poor, fat, alcoholic, junk-fed relatives are so bloody noble?!?

PSF, london, United Kingdom

""Where do you go, to whom do you turn, when suddenly you have nothing? ""

I have an idea - you could open a shop selling miniature violins. I know I feel like playing one right now.

Stuart, London, United Kingdom

What's the overwhelming theme in all this? GREED!

David Ashton, Bathurst, Australia

As someone who has been made redundant 4 times at last count, my heart doesn't bleed for some of the fatter cats having to re-align their income/expenditure situation. I can't feel they're deserving of disproportionate sympathy

P Smith, Rugeley, Staffordshire, UK

Either this article is high class snobbery or sardonic sentiment (Personally I believe it is the latter.)

Daniel, Wigan, UK

""Where do you go, to whom do you turn, when suddenly you have nothing? ""

loads of unemployed people in Britain face this day in day out

Ben , Manchester, UK

It seems that some comments are missing the point.
Normal people cannot show sympathy because those financial wizards were earning fortunes and doing a lousy job.
After all who is to blame for this mess?
As it has always being, in a crisis like this the poorer will suffer the most.

Kaye, Gramado, Brazil

We have a similar group of people who are facing the loss of their employment privilege in New York. It might be fun to form comparable groups to observe and see which sinks faster.

Fred Temby, Ottawa Lake, USA

I cannot believe the ignorance of some of the comments here. Many of those who have lost their jobs at Lehmans are support staff - secretaries, receptionists, cleaners, catering staff, etc. My husband is one of them. They have lost their income and their pension. Why do you think they deserve it?

Elizabeth, Stratford, UK

Voila the difference between "cog" jobs and "grease" jobs. Financiers just grease the wheels of "real" work; entrepreneurs, industry, even artists/service, who MAKE things. Those (like my parents) who create that which has intrinsic vs subjective (ie on paper) value always come out best in the end!

Lizzie, London,

Sure it's tough for these people but it is acutally tougher for the support staff, the people in the tech roles, secretaries etc. These people have lost their jobs and don't have the"problem" of wondering what to do about their country pad, or their nanny or whatever. Bad article.

Bob Smith, London,

Enough of jealousy to high earners! No one gets nothing for free, niether we see how they earn it, responsabilities, sacrifices, training, studying and money they spend on their education to get there, the media just shows few glossy bits. Is pathetic feel joy/no sympathy for others in difficulties

maria garcia, london, england

"which holiday should they cancel first?" !!

Play the world's smallest violin... it takes a lot to make me cry.

Jake, London,

Everybody who rants gleefully about bankers being made unemployed says they should get a real job. So tell me whats a real job? How much is someone allowed to earn before its not a real job and they become some kind of fat cat? I suspect its anyone who earns more than the person doing the ranting...

d, london, uk

Close the pits and everyone north of Watford goes into hysteria about people being forced out of jobs that paid meagre wages and sent them to early deaths. Close the banks and those same people are jumping for joy. Oh you sad, bitter people who only enjoy other peoples misery.

Linda, London, England

The exploiters' fake house-of-cards "economy" is crashing on their heads? That's karma: it's been crashing on everyone else's heads for decades.

"Hard working" alone does not equal virtue, otherwise wealthy pimps would be virtuous.

Being money-obsessed, amoral, shallow & materialistic = no virtue.

Tony, Hamilton, Canada

Boo hoo hoo. I'll save my tears for the cleaning lady now out of a job. Wives of the rich who do not work are nothing more than vapid gossipers who have absolutely no worth in society. At least the cleaning lady contributed.

Chuckles, Seattle, USA

how pathetic, try saying that to someone who works equally as hard on minimum wage. Big descisions deciding on selecting cava instead of cristal , nanny or after school club, i really have no sympathy for the greedy wives and their shallow and pointless lifestyles.

yu, gb,

Bucknell is detached from reality if she thinks this is hardship.

Scraping for food and water every day - that's what a great number of the world's population do. That's hardship

She should go and look at the world - and not just from the balcony of 5* hotels.

Save your sympathy for the deserving

MD, Milton Keynes,

I have no sympathy whatsoever for the well paid executives that lost their jobs at Lehman bros. this week. City salaries have always been over inflated. Time they got a proper job and NO the economy does not depend solely on the City.
Kia Balali-Mood, PhD,, Oxford

Kia, Oxford, UK

What a supperbly written piece of work Wonderfully, wonderously put/commentated on/ expressed. Incredible insight, although I don't know whether to laugh or cry!

G, LONDON,

These people chose to work in an industry without job security where by definition they can earn enormous incomes one minute and nothing the next. No-one forces City workers to live in big houses or have second homes-they chose it, now they have to adjust to a new reality. Welcome to the real world

Shane, London,

Thankfully someone sees the bigger picture. They cannot afford staff. Staff lose jobs. No more expensive restaurants. Waiters lose jobs. Everyone suffers. Anyone gloating is basically saying the suffering of the poor is enough to justify what you perceive to be just desserts for the successful.

Tom, London,

The jealousy shown by some posters on here is disgusting. The few people I know who work in the City work very hard for their well deserved money. I'm sure there are those who earn a lot of money and don't deserve it, as there are in many professions, but there are many who do deserve it.

EB, London,

of course we have sympathy, but for all categories of workers.
and isn't all this but a quite predictable outcoming of capitalism? for how long fools on the hill have been warning the world but their words fell unheard? maybe we should re-think economy? greetings of agreement to Terry, Bagneres

tony, rome , italy

In what way does a woman with no job and a team of people to assist with home life deserve to think of herself as a 'business partner'? Who's really letting who down in these circumstances.

Malcolm, London, UK

Good riddance to these egotistical non-productive city dwellers. I hope they all lose everything so they can taste the otherside of life. No more big bonuses, get a real job. I hope more brokers go bust. Goodbye Wall Street and greed.

Tony, Birmingham, UK

I don't think some of you realise that this is not satire. You feel no sympathy because they had cooks or went on skiing holidays. When all these cooks or resort employees lose their jobs because there is no one to pay their salaries, will you revel in that too?

Frances, Toronto, Canada

Steve and Tom,
That's unfair. Most of these people have worked hard all their lives to achieve what they did. They gave their lives to their jobs in order to provide better for their families. And suddenly everything they worked for is gone. Have some sympathy!

Anna, london,

Yes Frank, where was the outpouring of sympathy when Thatcher "killed off" the mining industry?

This effected real communities which still haven't recovered - one of the reasons you've got a part of society who expect to be unemployed!

Re-create some industry and real jobs and real work!

Terry, Bagneres, France

They went to university, then they work 18 hour days including weekends. And they're supposed to feel bad for the 9-5 worker who gets lunch breaks, in a job that requires no qualifications, who hits the TV and the pub in the evening?

Please. This 'us vs them' mentality is a horrible thing to see.

Matt, London,

I live in Westchester, NY and I don't know ANYONE who has this much money or paid help. I REALLY DOUBT that there are that many people who made this much money. The great majority of workers on wall street are secretaries & assistants who work and live very much like secretaries & Admin in London

Anne, Westchester, USA

I am stunned by the lack of understanding shown by your readers. I am also stunned by the assumption that families are reliant on a male breadwinner - be it in the city or anywhere else. Many of those who lost very good jobs were working mothers.

Mary, Forest Hill, London,

Quite stunning how not one other poster has any sympathy.

Perhaps these investment bankers should apologise for having the terrenity to work hard, get qualified, face huge competition, and actually step out for a better life for their loved ones.

I have never seen such inverted snobbery.

Marcus, Tampa, USA

I'm not sure I understand this. Are we supposed to feel sorry for these people?

Willaim Seymour, Portland, ME, USA

Chapter 1 of "Investment For Dummies" probably says "diversify, don't put all your eggs in one basket". Yet many "financial wizards" concentrated all their wealth in Lehman shares and correlated residential property. Everyone in the City knows you can lose your job overnight. Fail to prepare...

Mark Burton, South Kensington, London, UK

I find it hard to shed any tears for people who are musing about whether to drop the skiing trip or the country retreat. Oh and the poor little darlings whose tennis lessons might have to stop. Try telling your woes to someone living on $1 day or who lost everything (family incl) in an earthquake.

Rebecca, Osaka,

If they had a "Plan B", would this lead to a realisation that there are alternative ways of living, with alternative values / other ways of measuring what is a "good life"? And is risking such a realisation too scary to contemplate? Emperor's New Clothes.

Chris Tinkler, Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire

Oh my heart bleeds....meanwhile in the real world, ordinary people do not have the heartbreaking decision of which member of staff to sack first and which holiday to cut, because they have to hold down low-paid full-time jobs, raise families, do all the housework, care for elderly parents, etc, etc.

Alison, Bristol,

No sympathy. The deck of cards is collapsing, so what, the former pawn brokers in suits (merchant bankers) can start earning an honest living for a change, some may even become useful members of the real world. Wives, forget the paid help, get a job same goes for the spoiled brats.

mike, Sydney, Australia

When you start to observe that some of the staff will have to go, you loose almost all sympathy.

You may not have someone to clean your house and observe that a village in Africa may not get their clean water supply. Do you really understand the inequality in life?

Martyn, Leiden,

This article is beyond satire.

Gordon, Edinburgh,

Seriously...Boo bloody hoo!

John Smith, London,

Let's see. Hmmmm. Maybe........No. Possibly ............... no

Can't find an ounce of sympathy.

"Do we keep the cleaner or the nanny?". It's a different world - most people think "Can I afford to keep a roof over our heads, heat the house and feed the kids" when they lose their job

Andy, London,

Doubtless they have SAVINGS to fall back on - like those of us who recognised a bubble when we saw one.

Bruce Robertson, Brighton, UK

Wow, I feel really feel for the bankers and traders out of work, maybe now they will find out what it is like for the rest of us working stiffs, living pay cheque to pay cheque and not having much to put aside for rises in gas, electric, rent and food costs. Maybe change is coming for all? I hope so

Lana, Boston, usa

my heart bleeds. Is this supposed to be a joke? "which holiday should they cancel first?" please!

julian, london,

A thoughtful piece-, spot on observations about the impact of unemployment on families and self-esteem. Yet in the same newspaper an author recently described the eating habits of "the poor" and wilfully unemployed...chain smoking, TV watching layabouts. Quite a different take on job loss!

kat, Marseille, France

This article has moved me to tears. They may have to abandon the winter ski trip, let the cook go *and* let the garden fill with weeds because they cannot afford a gardener? This is shameful. Surely there must be some sort of government help provided for these poor, poor people.

Nick James, Bath,

Hey, you never know, maybe they wll just have to get by day-to-day like the rest of us. I suspect that most of them have enough money and assets put by in order that they will not feel the pinch for quite some time. If not, then they can live on the memories of burning through the money.

Dave T., Kabul,

Perhaps they will now make a film about five middle-aged ex-investment bankers who reinvent themselves as male strippers.

Frank Upton, Solihull,

Boo hoo - My heart bleeds for those that have to give up their Notting Hill homes, Nannies, Cleaners and private schools for the children. If their husbands were good financial analysts shouldn't they have seen it coming? Perhaps those stay at home wives will have to get a job to pay for it all!

Tom, London,

How dare you go fishing for sympathy. I hope that one day soon you will wake up, realise just how bloody privileged your life has been, and be thankful for what you had. Go look somewhere else for a shoulder to cry on.

Steve Smedley, Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK