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One-Percent Jokes and Plutocrats in Drag: What I Saw When I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Magazine
Posted: February 24th, 2014
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wal...
Recently, our nations financial chieftains have been feeling a little unloved. Venture capitalists are comparing the persecution of the rich to the plight of Jews at Kristallnacht, Wall Street titans are saying that theyre sick of being beaten up, and this week, a billionaire investor, Wilbur Ross, proclaimed that the 1 percent is being picked on for political reasons. Ross's statement seemed particularly odd, because two years ago, I met Ross at an event that might single-handedly explain why the rest of the country still hates financial tycoons the annual black-tie induction ceremony of a secret Wall Street fraternity called Kappa Beta Phi. It was January 2012, and Ross, ... the leader (or Grand Swipe) of the fraternity, was preparing to invite 21 new members neophytes, as the group called them to join its exclusive ranks. Id heard whisperings about the existence of Kappa Beta Phi. It was a secret fraternity, founded at the beginning of the Great Depression, that functioned as a sort of one-percenters Friars Club. Each year, the groups dinner features comedy skits, musical acts in drag, and off-color jokes, and its groups privacy mantra is What happens at the St. Regis stays at the St. Regis. For eight decades, it worked. No outsider in living memory had witnessed the entire proceedings firsthand. The first and most obvious conclusion was that the upper ranks of finance are composed of people who have completely divorced themselves from reality. No self-aware and socially conscious Wall Street executive would have agreed to be part of a group whose tacit mission is to make light of the financial sectors foibles. Not when those foibles had resulted in real harm to millions of people in the form of foreclosures, wrecked 401(k)s, and a devastating unemployment crisis.
Note: This article is adapted from Kevin Rooses new book Young Money. For more on secret societies, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
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