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Dalton fathers were attracted to him as a young man clearly on the make. Punch Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, and a Dalton father at the time, tried to recruit Epstein to come to the Times. (Epstein recounts a story of riding with Sulzberger in his wood paneled station wagon to the family’s country estate and Sulzberger talking to the chauffer on a phone from the backseat to the front.) But he wasn’t interested in being a journalist. In 1976, another Dalton father, asking “wouldn’t you rather be rich than be a teacher?” introduced him to Bear Stearn’s chief Ace Greenberg, a conversation Epstein recounts as this: Greenberg: “Everyone tells me you’re super smart in math and you’re Jewish and you’re hungry...so why don’t you start working here tomorrow?” Epstein: “What?” Greenberg: “If you’re supposed to be so fucking smart, don’t you understand English?” Epstein: “Ok. Count me in.” Hence, Epstein, like many in the late ‘70s, arrived on Wall Street. By the fortuitous luck of being there at that point in time, Epstein was propelled by a much more explosive form of upward mobility than had ever before existed. With a facility for mathematics as well as for getting along with wealthy men, he got rich at an even faster rate than so many others. He moved into the penthouse of a new building at 66" Street and Second Avenue—still in the shadow of HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022910