Hedgemony

If you were wondering who buys the stupefyingly expensive wristwatches I wrote about below, Tom Wolfe trains his sights on "those people," hedge fund traders, here. If it were written by anyone else I would question the veracity the tales he relates but such is Wolfe's repute we must believe every horrifying detail. Here are a couple of them:

[T]he hedge fund founder desperate to get his son into one of Greenwich’s socially swell private schools who clips a six-figure check to the first page of the application, witlessly forcing the school to reject both his son and his check or lose all credibility—

The lone-wolf entrepreneur who keeps an old-money matron and charity fundraiser waiting outside his office in Greenwich for an hour, remains reared back in his chair with his feet propped up on top of his desk as she comes in, listens to her pitch with his feet on top of his desk, utters a sum total of two words, “Not interested,” with his feet up on top of his desk, and offers no farewell, not even a Godspeed tap-tap of the shoes on his feet up on top of the desk—

If you can stomach it, read it all. I grew up in that town; much different place in those days.