Mayor Bloomberg announced today that the city wants to invest $45 million in government money to “retrain” investment bankers, traders, and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street, so that they can stay in the city and keep spending money here and contribute to the growth of the city, etc., etc. That’s a nice idea, but what does that mean, retrain? It’s unclear from the Times article. Is it, like, sensitivity training? Are they going to do some Clockwork Orange–type thing where they strap ex–Lehman Brothers bankers to chairs and show them images of wailing people whose houses have been foreclosed upon and hungry children and Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick? Are they going to have to take compassion classes? Developing. [NYT]
