You want the tie, you buy the tie.

The inability to pay $200 for a really nice tie is, of course, only the tiniest part of what’s different, but he thinks about it.

You want the tie, you buy the tie.

That’s how it was before. There was constant movement, an upward thrust. You worked hard and you were pulled along in the wake of the boom. Just out of university, you had your pick of jobs. The firms came to you. He says, “You could picture something in your mind—a promotion, a bonus—and it would happen.”

You want the tie, you buy the tie.

James, whose identity is masked here because he’s hoping to be hired back when all of this is over, tells his story in a downtown café. He owns a condo in this condo-pocked neighbourhood of art galleries and organic markets. He paid for it fully after only five years in a six-figure job at a Bay Street boutique investment firm. James, who is lanky and pensive, got used to $150 dinners on weeknights without a second thought, a nice vacation here and there.

James is 28.

The part he keeps going over is that he saw it coming. How he told people, and no one believed him. He saw it because one aspect of his job was buying and selling stocks and bonds for investors, and in the spring of ’08, he noticed that companies were losing interest in his products. Over the next few months, he saw deals fall apart at the last minute. He went out with his friends, many of them graduates of prestigious Canadian business schools, guys like him working 12 hours a day and on weekends, exhausted and loving the exhaustion. He advised one of them not to buy a house, saying things were about to get worse. His friend laughed at him. Soon after, James was doing the laughing, at a colleague who asked, “What kind of bonus do you think we’ll get this year?” Said James, “You’ll be lucky if you have a job at the end of the year.” Ha ha.

“I plan to be famous, I’ll admit that. Right now, I’m acting in an on-line comedy series called Starving Artist. My friends are behind it. So far, 120,000 people have seen my ass on YouTube. I assume the money will come later”
- Isaac Kessler

But he really got nervous when he saw the senior managers not getting nervous, ignoring the obvious. James remembers being taken to a hockey game at the ACC by a client. Usually, on top of free seats, the company would open the box, invite the firm guys inside for drinks, food, perks that probably ran the corporation thousands of dollars. This time, they didn’t open the box.

Associates took him out for lunch less. And when they did, the restaurants were just a little less nice.

And then the crash, and the bleeding.

And then the call to the office last fall.

It was weird to get fired. Younger staff were mostly the first to go. James could see that things were bloated, there were too many guys like him in his office. He recognized his firing as good business, even as he walked out the door.