Can Stacey Cunningham Humanize Wall Street?

© Interpretingthetimes.com

No. I could leave it at that one-word answer, but then this would be a very short commentary. While it is about time that the New York Stock Exchange had a woman at the helm, she would not be there if she promised anything but business as usual.

Judging by the reactions of other women in leadership positions, this historical appointment (the NYSE is 226 years old and Cunningham is the first female president) is barely significant in achieving the goal of gender parity in the financial services industry, let alone any other kind of milestone. As Kathryn Kolbert of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies was quick to point out, the fact that we are still celebrating every newly-minted woman CEO shows how rare this phenomenon remains. According to Kolbert, you need to reach at least a thirty-percent threshold for critical mass, when the good 'ol boys business model begins to transform and truly accept gender equity in terms of leadership roles.

The NYSE may in fact be eager simply to change public perception of itself as a stodgy institution of greedy White men with little concern for the average American citizen who is increasingly "minority" in every sense of the word. Well, good luck with that. We are not so easily fooled into believing that a fresh face, female or otherwise, is anything more than a facade for what some would call the most destructive entity in our economic sphere.

Public enterprises on the NYSE, Dow, and other registers have succeeded largely by exploiting labor, eroding consumer protections, and lobbying for deregulation to absolve themselves of harm to the environment. Did I mention they have also cannibalized each other in mergers that are permitted by lax anti-trust laws? No? Well, they do. Wall Street should add a dog to the bull and the bear because it is a dog-eat-dog world they have created. The only survivors, the only constants, are shareholders. Shareholders are people wealthy enough to invest in public companies. The fast majority of us, if we called a financial advisor, would be laughed at and then hung up on. We don't matter. Never have, probably never will.

Changing that callous culture is what we all want from the next appointed leader, regardless of what gender they identify as. One would like to be optimistic in this case, but feminism has created something of a monster. Young women have been taught that if you want to succeed in a man's world, then you must behave like a man. You must set aside your sentimentality, your desire for compromise and cooperation, and be ruthless to be accomplished in the business world. No room for warm hearts here. What a shame. What a failed promise of feminism to heal the wounds of economic warfare, to make businesses more humane. Indeed, to make society more accountable and trustworthy.

Do not get me wrong. I have not met Ms. Cunningham, and have no personal axe to grind. She may be a truly gentle human being. I will even assume so. It is just that I fail to see why anyone of either sex would want anything to do with an institution so hell bent on concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Wall Street is symbolic of greed because it enables a financial model that creates and rewards greed. This is what has to change, and anyone who advocated for a system that was more fair would not be granted a leadership position. They would be sent packing.

It may simply be the scale of Wall Street that has become the greatest part of the problem. A similar model scaled down to the size of a local economy, with vastly lowered investment thresholds, might work just fine. The more shareholders the better. The less exclusiveness, the better. The more diversity, the better.

Cunningham is likely to be the continuation of the problem here, not because she could not change Wall Street for the better, but because her affluent constituents have no will to do so. They are being served already. Well, let them all be served with this notice: the revolution is coming. You will know by our lack of participation in your transactions as we turn to local commerce, and invest not in products and services but in experiences, charitable organizations, and assign more value to intangibles.

Not Fearless Enough?

© whotv.com

I am disappointed in Fearless Girl, that bronze figure in front of the iconic Charging Bull sculpture on Wall Street. Ok, it is my fault, actually. I took her symbolism in an entirely different direction than the artist who created her intended. Still, I find myself angry at the artist responsible for the bull wanting to evict the innocent child standing in defiance before his angry bovine. I wonder if this is just the beginning of art depicting culture wars.

When I first saw images of the pony-tailed pixie, I was delighted. My assumption, a naive one it turns out, was that she was a literal stand-in for the proverbial little guy. You know, those of us whose investment portfolios consist of a PayPal donate button on our blog, and two to four lottery tickets when the pot gets big enough to remind us there is a lottery. Those who in no way, shape, or form can participate in the stock market. That is who I thought our heroine was standing for.

Come to find out, the point of the diminutive Miss was to draw attention to the lack of women on corporate boards, let alone the near absence of females running those boards. Oh, boy. Oh, girl! While I am no sympathizer for male privilege, I could still feel my heart sink at this revelation. Not only that, but the statue was commissioned by one of the world's largest financial firms: State Street Global Investors, based in Boston. What I had thought might be more of a monument to the Occupy Wall Street protests turned out to be not the slightest bit sympathetic to the working class. She was installed on March 7 of this year, on the eve of International Women's Day, so I probably should have made the connection.

A circular plaque at her feet proclaims "Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference." Conveniently, the "SHE" is not only gender-relevant, it is the acronym for State Street's fund's NASDAQ ticker symbol. I see, so she is an advertisement as well as (instead of?) art. To its credit the fund itself tracks the stocks of more than a hundred companies that State Street sees as exemplary leaders in promoting women in the corporate sector. The pure artist in me still views this as a sell-out.

Meanwhile, the creator of Charging Bull is snorting at having his creation upstaged by the kid. The original intent of his statue was to provide an uplifting symbol in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash. He donated the 3-ton work, and friends helped him install it in the middle of a cold winter's night, right in front of the New York Stock Exchange. It was almost removed by city officials who deemed it a traffic hazard and "nuisance," but public pressure resulted in the statue being relocated to its current place in Bowling Green Park, two blocks away.

© USweekly.com

The Sicilian artist, Arturo Di Modica, worries now that the meaning of his sculpture has been corrupted by the little squirt-in-a-skirt, saying that the bull now symbolizes male chauvinism. Hey, if the hoof fits....The bull will always symbolize to me how the ultra-wealthy throw their weight around. The china shop is the local economy, your neighborhood grocer, mechanic, hardware store owner, and every other business you used to be able to rely on before they got swallowed up by big box stores, and even bigger agriculture, banks, and fossil fuel barons. There is a wasteland in the wake of that bull, and we all know it. We still fear it, save for the few that occupied Wall Street for awhile, and maybe Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; but they still think the stock market can be regulated. One could argue it should be slayed.

Fearless Girl currently has a permit from the city to stay put another year. I do like that outcome, but when her time has come, if it comes, perhaps we should replace her with a matador sticking a few blades into that son-of-a-beast. When I win the lottery, or get enough blog donations, maybe I'll commission that statue. Heck, I'm even willing to make the bullfighter a woman.

Election 2012

The importance of exercising your democratic responsibility to vote this November 6 cannot be understated, but you also have my sympathy for how increasingly broken our public institutions are becoming. A President, a congressman, or any other elected official alone cannot begin to repair problems that have been decades in the making, and largely out of their legal control anyway. The political process needs reform, no doubt, but we also need large cultural shifts to make America the nation it could (and should) be.

It may surprise you to learn that I am not going to be overtly endorsing any candidates in this post. That is because it is more important for me to get you thinking outside the (ballot) box. I trust you to vote with considerable deliberation, and I’m confident that we share respect for each other’s beliefs.

It surprises me to reflect that I have probably worked (been employed in the traditional sense) more consistently under Republican administrations than under Democratic leadership in the White House. I also find I have far more anxiety over our nation’s foreign and environmental policies under Republican leadership. Still, I think that most economic prosperity has little to do with legislation. As a consumer, I certainly appreciate regulations that protect me from contaminants in my water and food, and pollutants in the air that I breathe. Since I greatly value wildlife, I appreciate the maintenance of existing parks and refuges, and the creation of more. My creative side applauds all financial support of the arts, and innovations in sustainable energy and agriculture. I am grateful that I am in good health, and fall under my wife’s insurance coverage, but I have close friends who are not so fortunate. They have pre-existing conditions that until “Obama-care” prevented them from being properly insured. This issue alone is fodder for another post, so I will stop there.

Three cultural conditions exist right now that do trouble me. They are: Wasteful consumerism, the blurring of boundaries between church and state, and the worship of Wall Street.

The average middle class household doesn’t take home the income it used to. That is an undisputed fact, when one adjusts for inflation and looks back at our historical wage-earning power. Unfortunately, we are also more irresponsible than ever in how we choose to spend that income. One may even argue that there really isn’t even a middle class at all anymore, because much of what we purchase we go into debt to pay for. We aren’t “keeping up with the Joneses,” we’re burying ourselves under credit cards. I wonder how much tax reform, wage reform, and opposition to unions there would be if everyone only spent what they actually had. It would become instantly obvious how much of a gap there is between the rich and the poor. “We can’t redistribute wealth!” you say. What do you think Wall Street does?

Ah, yes, the stock market: Legalized gambling at its finest, for only the highest of high rollers. It is the engine that redistributes wealth to those who already have enough disposable income to invest. Wait, I’m sorry, many corporations also robbed retirement accounts to continue their illusion of profitability. Employees, consumers, and all too often the environment, suffer to appease the almighty shareholder. This is the one institution that needs reform above all others.

Lastly, we are experiencing a resurgence of Christian fundamentalists attempting to impose their values on all citizens through legislation and funding (or de-funding) avenues. The problem is that, for better or for worse, our constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee us the freedom to sin. Not that we should, of course, and not to say there are no consequences for our sins in terms of prosecution and incarceration to name just two, but it is pretty explicitly protected. Some misguided folks might equate that freedom with “pursuit of happiness,” but I wouldn’t go that far. I am sorry that “God” and religion have become synonymous, though, because the higher power I believe in is far more inclusive and tolerant than many of “His” Christian believers.

There you have it, my two cents with room to expand in later posts. What do you think? Do we achieve most of our personal and collective success in spite of government intervention? Are we too rigid in our adherence to current government revenue streams (taxes)? How do we overcome the grandiose expectations we have of both government and the marketplace? We need to begin a dialogue, not another debate, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.