Perpetual adolescence hits the Stock market:

"On a recent day at noon, every chair was empty in the vast dining room at the century-old, members-only Stock Exchange Luncheon Club. Enduring wars and market crashes, the club for years was packed at lunch, as members -- including Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and stockbroker "Black Jack" Bouvier, father of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- courted customers over tomato-clam juice and oysters on the half shell. Traders often slipped upstairs for a smoke, a drink or an afternoon nap.

The club "has stood as a bastion of capitalism since 1898," when it was formed by stockbrokers, investors and industrialists, the club's Web site says, serving as a "quiet, gracious retreat" from the hubbub of Wall Street."

...

Now, the club serves only a moderately priced lunch in the bar and delivers light food to the floor. The elegant dining room still appears ready for customers, laid out with white table cloths; but the maitre d', the wait staff and the diners are gone.

...

"It's a tragedy -- the end of an era," says Alan Rothenberg, a private investor and former Big Board member who has been a member of the Luncheon Club since 1981. Says Carl Weisbrod, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York: "By and large, the day of the lunching social club is gone." For many traders, it was part of the routine of exchange life. "The Luncheon Club had the best �©clairs in the world, the best fish in the city," laments Peter Yahr, a floor trader. "I ate lunch there every single day for 25 years."

Now, like most traders, he eats lunch at his post on the exchange floor. Changes in the way stocks are traded, now in increments of pennies, increased the number of trades, tethering brokers to their booths. And with corporate scandals gyrating stock prices, slipping away for lunch is riskier than ever.

Last week, the exchange floor was abuzz with developments in the WorldCom Inc. and Adelphia Co. trials taking place a few blocks north at the federal courthouse. On Friday afternoon, the guilty verdict in Martha Stewart's trial on obstruction and other charges came shortly after lunch. "You can't step away for a minute," Mr. Yahr says. "The whole world can change."


Now I ask you. Because we think we are indispensable, we must cram our faces full of food at our desks or trading spots and we're expected to even be proud of the fact? What are we 15? Isn't the belief that you are indispensable, a perfect indicator of perpetual adolescence?

Phoo to that I say. Next we'll be enagaging in belching contests as a result of having eaten too rapidly. Even though it is Lent, I call for the return of the two martini lunch!

Still, in other parts of our society there are glimpses of hope for maturity.