In 1994, Malcolm W. Browne of the New York Times wrote a lead sentence that was so breathlessly alarming it's still being talked about two decades later, at least among a particularly sardonic group of friends of mine. (You know who you are.) Under the headline "New Look at Apocalypse: Dying Sun Will Boil Seas and Leave Orbiting Cinder," Browne informed us:
Hate to say it, but the weather report for Wall Street employment is sounding eerily similar for both the buy and sell sides, at least according to the financial meteorologists who appeared before open microphones this week. Of course, predictions like these are nothing new, but they seemed to reach a climax this week amid a busy conference schedule and more casualty reports from the wicked game of dodgeball being played on the hedge-fund killing fields.