Asia Times: Toxic skills keep their appeal

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Toxic skills keep their appeal
By Barbara Garson


For the book I'm writing about unemployed Americans, I had no trouble finding accountants, brokers, cashiers, or die casters. Admittedly, I had to go out of town to interview the die casters. But when I arrived, alphabetically, at unemployed editors, I had only to look in my address book.

Financiers were further from my life experience than either die casters or editors. Yet the "do you know anyone who ... ?" method still proved an effective way of turning up unemployed hedge-fund analysts and bank loan officers - and within a week at that. It was only when I refined my search to ferret out unemployed financiers who had actually handled those infamous "toxic assets" that I hit the proverbial brick wall.

Since mortgage-backed securities and the swaps that insure them had been the downfall of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and the giant insurance company AIG, packs of bankers who worked on them must, I assumed, be roaming free on the streets of Manhattan. Yet I couldn't find a single one.

Finally, I phoned a law firm representing Lehman Brothers employees in a suit for the pay they were owed when the company shut down without notice. I asked the lawyer if he could possibly inquire among his unemployed clients for someone, anyone, who used to work with mortgage-backed securities and might be willing to talk about how he or she was getting by today. "I don't have to use real names," I assured him. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KG16Dj02.html