On Wall Street he and a few others—how many?—three hundred, four hundred, five hundred?—had become precisely that… Masters of the Universe.

This line comes from Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel *The Bonfire of the Vanities*, a satire of 1980s New York in the era of leveraged buyouts, conspicuous consumption, and the cultural ascendancy of high finance. Wolfe uses the phrase “Masters of the Universe” to capture the self-mythologizing confidence of elite Wall Street bond traders and dealmakers who, amid booming markets and enormous bonuses, felt they were remaking the world through money and risk. The quote is tied to the novel’s portrayal of status anxiety and social hierarchy—how financial power translates into a sense of omnipotence, even as the city’s racial, political, and media pressures expose how fragile that power can be.

Wolfe’s phrasing is both grandiose and cutting. By counting “three hundred, four hundred, five hundred?” he suggests an exclusive priesthood—tiny in number yet convinced of its global dominion. “Precisely that… Masters of the Universe” mimics the character’s internal voice (or the era’s rhetoric) and exposes its absurdity: the title sounds cosmic, but it rests on market cycles, leverage, and social perception. The line crystallizes Wolfe’s larger theme that modern status is performative and precarious. The “masters” believe they control reality, but the novel repeatedly shows how quickly reputation, wealth, and freedom can be undone by chance, scandal, and institutions outside their control.