In the Shadow of Goldman Sachs, Wall Street Is Far from Recovery
OPS_admin | Dec 17, 2009 | Comments 0
Profits and bonuses are back on the Street, but the prosperity hasn’t filtered down past the service economy.
On the October day after the Dow hit 10,000 for the first time in a year, wealthy socialites assembled on a chilly evening in New York for the Al Smith dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Named for an uneducated fishmonger who played his working-class bona fides all the way to the 1928 Democratic nomination for president, the event has become a mainstay of the rich and influential. Speaking at the dinner in 2000, then-candidate George W. Bush famously quipped, “This is an impressive crowd: the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.”
On 51st Street, around the corner from the glow of the Waldorf, Abdul Rashidi tore down his fruit stand. He wore a ski mask against the cold, and he was agitated as he loaded his fruit into boxes.
“I work eighteen hours a day,” Rashidi said. “Yesterday I make $70.”
“They don’t buy fruit from me,” he said, gesturing at the hotel. “I think they have fruit inside.”
Filed Under: Economy - Labor











