Greed & The City

As I watched the film adaptation of Sex and the City on a plane recently, I couldn't help but notice how ironic it was that the New York version that this movie displayed and encouraged was crumbling down just outside my window.

At this point, it is really hard to know if the series fueled a lifestyle of 500 dollar shoes, breakfast mimosas and hefty apartements on the average New Yorker or if, conversely, the appartements, restaurants, wardrobe and lounges of Carrie and friends reflected the average day of working girls at the time. But the question of which inspired which is irrelevant on an era where the line between TV and reality is blurry. What really matters is that in the future, when people want to understand what really happened during the credit boom and what caused the 2008 crash, they just have to watch a couple of episodes of the series (watching the whole movie is too much of a punishment).

Not coincidentially, the series and the movie cover the whole decade where excessive leverage, minimal rates and 1-800-FREEMORTGAGE made a whole generation believe that a one bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village, a Louis Vuitton puppy bag and daily Cosmopolitans at lunch were just around the corner. Just like small town blonds arrive in LA to make it in showbiz, Ivy Leaguers flooded the city to indulge in haute couture, VIP lounges and, of course, casual sex. This generation, boosted by Gordon Gekko's "Greed is good" motto (but misinterpreting the rest of Oliver Stone's Wall Street) managed, by means of 9 figure bonuses made up of just thin air, to turn Hugo Boss, Armani and Moët & Chandon into the new Gap and Heineken.

Well, fear is good too. And even if recession will negatively affect all of us non-hedge funders, hopefully housing will become reasonably priced, risk will be treated as such and ludicrous salaries will be curtailed. But best of all, we wont have to bear for some time with Mr. Bigs and Carrie Bradshaws, fiction and real.