A sad story. A casualty of the financial meltdown. A man who worked for Bear Stearns, learning he would not be hired by JP Morgan Chase, chose to end his life.
Barry Fox, a research supervisor who worked for nine years at the brokerage firm, took a drug overdose and then jumped from his 29th-floor apartment the evening in May after he learned he wouldn't be hired by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which was about to buy his firm. A coroner recently confirmed in an autopsy report that the death was a suicide.
Part one | Part two
Mr. Fox, who was 51 years old when he died and had for years struggled with physical and mental disabilities, joined Bear Stearns in 1999 after stints at several other firms. He excelled in Bear Stearns's close-knit culture, associates say. Shortly after arriving, he began working as a “supervisory analyst,” vetting and approving research reports before they were disseminated to the public. In 2002, Mr. Fox was named managing director, a senior position. Mr. Fox's pay soon swelled to as much as $250,000 per year, says the 66-year-old Mr. Philippi.
Fred Phillipi was his partner. When Bear went under, the pressure intensified.
It was a grueling time for Mr. Fox, say associates. On May 1, he emailed Joanna Barouch, a childhood friend. “I've been in my own world over the past month or so since Bear Stearns went under,” he wrote. “I should know in a few days or a week or two whether I'll be going over to J.P. Morgan Chase. I have a chance but not a great chance – there are many applicants and few openings.”
The pressure can be unbearable; I've been through similar circumstances. He was not hired.
Despite years of hard work, he says, without adequate savings, Mr. Fox “still felt he had nothing to show for it as he went into his 50s.”
Showing posts with label Human Tragedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Tragedy. Show all posts
Friday, November 7, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Zimbabwe's Useless Money
Zimbabwe is in the grip of one of the great hyperinflations in world history. The people of this once proud capital have been plunged into a Darwinian struggle to get by. Many have been reduced to peddlers and paupers, hawkers and black-market hustlers, eating just a meal or two a day, their hollowed cheeks a testament to their hunger.
Horrific. Mugabe has destroyed the country in order to retain power.
inflation surpassing what independent economists say is an almost unimaginable 40 million percent
40,000,000% is obscene.
Economists here and abroad say Zimbabwe’s economic collapse is gaining velocity, radiating instability into the heart of southern Africa. As the bankrupt government prints ever more money, inflation has gone wild, rising from 1,000 percent in 2006 to 12,000 percent in 2007 to a figure so high the government had to lop 10 zeros off the currency in August to keep the nation’s calculators from being overwhelmed. (Had it left the currency alone, $1 would now be worth about 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.)
10 trillion Z-dollars. Look at that figure.
Basic public services, already devastated by an exodus of professionals in recent years, are breaking down on an ever larger scale as tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, garbage collectors and janitors have simply stopped reporting to their jobs because their salaries, more worthless literally by the hour, no longer cover the cost of taking the bus to work.
And Mugabe lives in splendor behind walls.
Clues to the calamitous state of the country can be found even in recent articles tucked into Mr. Mugabe’s mouthpiece, The Herald, the only daily newspaper he has allowed to keep publishing.
Horrific. Mugabe has destroyed the country in order to retain power.
inflation surpassing what independent economists say is an almost unimaginable 40 million percent
40,000,000% is obscene.
Economists here and abroad say Zimbabwe’s economic collapse is gaining velocity, radiating instability into the heart of southern Africa. As the bankrupt government prints ever more money, inflation has gone wild, rising from 1,000 percent in 2006 to 12,000 percent in 2007 to a figure so high the government had to lop 10 zeros off the currency in August to keep the nation’s calculators from being overwhelmed. (Had it left the currency alone, $1 would now be worth about 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.)
10 trillion Z-dollars. Look at that figure.
Basic public services, already devastated by an exodus of professionals in recent years, are breaking down on an ever larger scale as tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, garbage collectors and janitors have simply stopped reporting to their jobs because their salaries, more worthless literally by the hour, no longer cover the cost of taking the bus to work.
And Mugabe lives in splendor behind walls.
Clues to the calamitous state of the country can be found even in recent articles tucked into Mr. Mugabe’s mouthpiece, The Herald, the only daily newspaper he has allowed to keep publishing.
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