To the Editor:

When I lived in New York I spent a lot of time with people who worked on Wall Street.

I was the recipient of invitations to their lavish black-tie events, and four-star restaurants where numerous bottles of wine with a price tag that could feed a family for a year were served.

I loved it when they sent a car to pick me up at my modest apartment.

I won’t lie when I say how thrilled I was to be sitting at the table across from Billy Joel while he tapped out the music to Elton John’s live performance on stage.

Numerous other celebrities came over to our table that night, no doubt because someone told them we were from a major Wall Street firm that paid a great deal of money for the privilege.

You Wall Street people know how to live, I thought, since the publishing industry I am closely connected to never showed me this kind of experience.

My friends were partners in major firms, who bought hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages and created very complicated securities from them.

I learned that some of the securities were created by MIT mathematicians, and when I had a conversation with one of the math “geniuses,” telling them that I considered myself to be a fairly intelligent person, but I could not understand these securities, the reply was, that’s o.k., people selling them don’t understand them either.

Through my Wall Street connections, I was invited to lunch by a major credit rating agency who wanted me to represent them as a mailing list broker serving the needs of large banks.

Since my clients are all publishers and were then, I did not want to venture into a business that I did not understand; but I was curious so I had the meeting.

They promised $100,000 a month in business and told me that the banks that would be contacting me would not be looking for people with good credit, but those that they considered to be credit unworthy.

They thought that was humorous. I did not laugh nor did I understand it.

Then they admitted that they were looking to offer mortgages to people who would most certainly fail to make the payments, but in the end, the banks would own the real estate, create securities and everyone would benefit, except of course for the those people who lost their homes.

There was no way the banks could lose they said.

They all broke out in laughter when I said that their scheme might work, but wondered what would happen if the real estate market failed. Real estate does not fail, they said.

Really?

The rest is history. We closed Lehman Brothers, locked up a major hedge fund manager, did some huge bail-outs, slapped some wrists, and left Wall Street to continue to make record profits, while most of the country is scratching to make a living.

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have some people very angry, and I’m not sure why, but the rest of the world is watching and many of them get it. Wall Street did not just take this country down.

We are a world economy, and many countries bought these empty securities, and we can thank the selfish, irresponsible actions of Wall Street for the negative effect on other nations as well.

Politicians from both sides are afraid to offend these very large powerful firms because they need the campaign contributions, but the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have nothing to lose.

If I were younger and didn’t enjoy my comforts so much, I’d join them.

Sincerely,

Sheila Brady, Old Forge