Poor Stephen Schwarzman

When Blackstone Group, a private equity fund, went public last spring, founder Stephen Schwarzman made $677.2 million. Plus his twenty-four percent ownership was valued (at the pre-IPO price) at $8B. It's likely drooped a bit since then, but even a 50% hit - which is unlikely - would still mean he's worth four bills.

This, of course, set some Wall Streeters into paroxysms of jealousy. Suddenly, their own personal fortunes seem so trivial, so paltry.

"You have no idea what an impression this made on Wall Street," a friend of Schwarzman's who works at another bank says. "You have all these guys who have spent their entire lies working just as hard to make twenty million. Sure, that's a lot of money, but then Schwarzman turns around and, seemingly overnight, has eight billion."

I could spend a lot of time parsing this quote - taken from a profile on Stephen Schwarzman, written by James B. Steward, and running in the Eustis Tilley number (Feb. 11-18) of The New Yorker.

But the guy quoted at least had the good sense to acknowledge that $20M is "a lot of money."

So, other than to observe that a lot of people work just as hard and don't make more than a fraction of that over their careers. And to wonder just what kind of get-rich-quicker stampede this is going to set off among those who are now feeling rather withered! (And you thought the hedge fund managers already made enough? Hah!)

No, I will save my parsing for a quote from Schwarzman, in which he says,

"I don't feel like a wealthy person. Other people think of me as a wealth person, but I don't. I feel the same as when I was a fifth-year associate trying to make partner at Lehman Brothers."

Maybe Schwarzman feels that way, in the same way that us commoners might feel like we're still in our thirties, even though the driver's license and mirror are screaming au contraire.

But it's really hard to grasp how someone with that much money doesn't feel wealthy. Forget the $8B. What about the $677M? Shouldn't that sum be sufficient for someone to "feel" like a wealthy person.

I might understand it better if Schwarzman were, like the Sage of Omaha, living in a modestly nice house.

But, no, Schwarman lives large. He owns a thirty-five room Park Ave Triplex. He owns the former E.F. Hutton estate in Florida, that turned out to be a tear-down, although a tear-down with some panache. It was carefully torn down so that, when it was expanded, the original building was more or less preserved.

He owns a $34M home in the Hamptons, an estate in Saint-Tropez, and a place in Jamaica. (Hey, mon, I'd just like another 200 square feet and a bit more closet space.)

So, okay, you've got to live large somewhere. But wouldn't you think that the 35 room Park Ave trifecta alone might enable someone to look in the mirror, wink at himself, and say, "You are one wealthy son-of-a-gun."

Apparently not.

And the ability to throw himself a pretty darned nice birthday party didn't do the trick, either.

Last February 14th, for Schwarzman's 60th b-day celebration,

Part of the cavernous Park Avenue armory was transformed into a large-scale replica of the Schwarzman's Park Avenue apartment. Replicas of Schwarzman's art collection were mounted on the walls, including, at the entrance, a full-length portrait of him by Andrew Festing, the president of the president of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

A replica of his apartment! How homey!

But, given that the Park Ave apartment has 35 rooms, you'd think there'd have been ample room to host the event their, but I guess they needed more room for the "faux night club setting" where dinner was served. Or maybe he was worried that one of his guests might have light-fingered the silver - or drawn a Dali-mustache on the full-length portrait.

Martin Short mc'd. Marvin Hamlisch played the piano. and Patti LaBelle sang. So did Rod Stewart, who ran through his greatest hits - to the tune of a reported $1M fee.

Happy Birthday to you, too!

So just what does it take for someone to feel wealthy these days when even the upper echelonians who us poor folk naively assume have it (financially) made don't feel all that well-to-do.

All I thought I was going to have to worry about was the declining middle class and the growing chasm between the haves and the have nots. Now I have to add fretting about the feelings of the wealthy. (Or is it the so-called wealthy?) Damn! I really didn't need to add anything else to my worry list, thank you.

Schwarzman's second wife, whose first husband was one of the Hearst fortune heirs, grew up the daughter of a New York City firefighter.

Wonder if she feels wealthy?