Tom Wolfe writes a devastating critique of unimaginably wealthy hedge fund managers, the lone rangers of the business world:
Look at me. Look at what I wear: the frayed jeans, counterpoint to my $1,250 custom-made silk shirts with French cuffs and gold cuff links, monogrammed, and no necktie, needless to say. The frayed jeans and the rakish open shirt thumb my nose at the rule-bound, convention-bound, bureaucracy-bound, socially ambitious, propriety-crippled lives of the “great” corporate leaders.
Look at their bewattled, plain vanilla faces—then look at my perpetual tan. Perpetual! I have my own plane and crew, and I can pursue the sun to wherever in the world it shines upon the earth at an early-June-like angle at any given moment, below the equator or above. It’s my money, my airplane … and it’s my face that is golden-tan perfection 365 days a year, while the C.E.O.’s skulk off to the good life in company planes with the name painted over, lest they be accused of soaking up the shareholders’ dividends along with the sun.
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Are we not bona fide swashbucklers, freebooters, and buccaneers who have triumphed in great adventures? Have we not demonstrated our aloofness from the rules that constrain C.E.O.’s and other timid people? Have we not been aggressive fighters who have done things no one ever dared before? Have we not demonstrated the strength to make the unwilling withdraw in fear and do things our way? Do we not have proven, tested nerves of steel? Have we not shown the world how big our swinging dicks and swaying stones are? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
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