The idea behind the company was to cut commission rates so low — they started off at $70 a trade in 1975, which was then a steal — that the average investor could trade without paying exorbitant fees to Wall Street.
It would not be unlike stockbrokers, or dot-com workers, who leased expensive apartments with their chunky bonuses and then had trouble paying the exorbitant rents as Wall Street slumped.
With November's elections just a month away, Democrats said their constituents were most upset at what they viewed as exorbitant severance packages that Wall Street executives received, even as companies like Lehman Brothers were staring down bankruptcy.
The populist issue of the day is Wall Street's exorbitant bonus payments.
Well, yes.Then again, the mobile phone itself began that way.In 1987, when Michael Douglas famously carried one in "Wall Street," it was an exorbitant gadget for high rollers.Now it's more common than a toilet.
One employee — who requested anonymity to avoid Dr. Irwin's ire — said the tax documents disclose what is "fairly widely known within the walls of A.B.S., and yes, the exorbitant costs have been questioned from the start".
It is his moment because liberals in the Democratic Party are sceptical of the progressive bona fides of Ms Clinton, who has padded her own pockets with exorbitant speaker's fees and played footsie with big donors and Wall Street.
The supposedly exorbitant autoworker wages that get everybody so riled up pale in comparison with the riches of Wall Street.
Since that cost was exorbitant to most, the lesser $700 purchase was more the norm (a foundation and four walls - no roof but potential to grow).
Yet Wall Street, we hear, is back and standing tall, even dishing out the sort of exorbitant bonuses that fell into disrepute after the crash of 2008.
