More On The Differences Within The One Percent

Reuters, via Ritholtz:

Within the 1 percent, awareness of the different tiers of wealth is as keen as an Indian matchmaker's sensitivity to the finer divisions of caste. And thanks to the wiretapping authority of the Manhattan federal prosecutor, the hoi polloi were recently able to eavesdrop on one conversation within the 1 percent that revealed some of these internal distinctions. The dialogue was between Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund investor convicted of insider trading last summer, and Anil Kumar, who was at the time a partner at McKinsey, the management consultant. The two were discussing their mutual friend, Rajat Gupta, the former managing director of McKinsey. At the time of the conversation - August 2008 - Gupta was considering a move from the blue-chip board of Goldman Sachs to serve as an adviser to KKR, the legendary private equity group. "I think he wants to be in that circle," Mr. Rajaratnam says to Mr. Kumar. "That's a billionaire circle, right? Goldman is like the hundreds of millions circle, right?"
Holly Peterson, the daughter of private equity billionaire Pete Peterson - and herself a rather sly and eloquent chronicler of the 1 percent in her essays and fiction - tells a similar story of the tension at the very top. "I think people making five million dollars to 10 million dollars definitely don't think they are making enough money," she told me. "Wouldn't it be nice to fly private? There are so many things you can aspire to, even making five million dollars a year. For the lower rung of this crowd, these people set up lives for themselves they can't afford. They are broke and maxed out on their credit cards in December, just like middle-class couples living on one hundred thousand dollars. I don't think the feel that rich. They are trying to play with the high-rollers, and there are things they can't do, and they feel deprived, which is completely sick and absurd, but that's the truth of the matter."

When $5 million just isn't enough, somebody can just screw off.  Fly private? F#*% you.  Can't make that kind of money last through the year?  Drop dead.  In Newt Gingrich's world, the working single mother getting by with food stamps is the person who has issues?  Sheez, something is wrong in the world today.