Firing in the News

A few months ago, an investment banker was fired from his job with Citigroup in NYC, amid the chaos that is our national economy. He has since decided that the best move for him, his wife, and his five children will be for him to put a sign over his head that reads "MIT Graduate for Hire", and loiter outside the Charles Schwab building. What's really sad is that he will probably have a job by the end of the week. Not so much for his pristine resume, or staunch interviewing skills, but because people like gimmicks. For some reason, doing anything out of the ordinary appeals to people (see: women), and this chap is certainly not ordinary.

Now I don't want to depress anyone, but there could be 175,000 more Citigroup employees fired by next year, which could cause a severe upswing in the population of peddling investment bankers wandering the streets of New York. And you know who this effects most of all? The homeless people that reside the streets of our major cities. Currently, they are in total control of their market and do business whichever way they can, but will soon be privy to an influx of new homeless men and women that stand to overtake their quaint lifestyle.

There is no way the current homeless population can combat these new, highly educated homeless people that will soon be roaming the streets. They're new to the market and don't understand the code that the homeless live by, therefore creating their own rules and guidelines. If you have $1.50 in your pocket and you're walking down the street, which one of these homeless individuals are you more likely to fork your money over to...

A) A man in his young 40's wearing a suit while holding a sign that says, "If you give me change right now, I will give you the keys to my wife's Lexus SUV."

B) A man with a dog and a beard.

Imagine you're a dentist and there is a surge of dentists coming from all over the world, brushing themselves into your work force. Suddenly you're not so special anymore, and your client base begins to decay (great play on words for dentist fans out there). That is what will happen to these poor homeless beggars on the streets of New York. I read once that the average homeless man/woman in NYC makes $36,000 a year, which most likely doesn't include taxes, meaning their adjusted income is somewhere around $50,000 . When you figure that the average rent for a one bedroom apartment in the city is around $20,000 a year, then in reality the average homeless person is making $70,000 as their yearly salary. Granted, they sleep on the streets and have to eat from the garbage, but they sure make enough money to buy whatever delicious treats they're into.

Now, here comes this hoard of ivy league graduates, desperate for a buck and willing to stop at nothing to get what they want. The homeless population can't compete with that, and will have to move out of the big city to a smaller town such as Cleveland or Baltimore, thus oversaturating that cities homeless demographic. Soon, there will be people living on the corner of every street in America, and we will have to carry fanny-packs full of change in order to give everyone a fair share of coinage.

Let's just keep our fingers crossed and hope it doesn't come to this, since I recently discovered CoinStar and have enjoyed turning my excess change into straight cash money to give to the group of people that are struggling the most during this economic downturn: strippers.