Greedy, money-grubbing, arrogant. These are a few of the many insults bandied about by President Obama and his media allies to describe the scapegoat du jour: Wall Street bankers.
Similar epithets can be heard all over this campus, spat by aggrieved students and professors, their faces flushed with the venom of self-righteousness. These loudmouths ceaselessly regurgitate talking points handed down every morning by the New York Times, every night by MSNBC’s pundit-ideologists.
Most of these people have never had a genuine conversation with a banker. They are, simply, economic know-nothings. They have not the slightest idea of what investment banks actually do, nor the faintest grasp of high finance, an amazingly rich and lively industry indispensable to our nation’s success.
Most Brown students will not be friends of Wall Street till their portfolios fatten, the dividends financing summer “cottages” and trans-Atlantic getaways. But that is not for a while. (And for our erstwhile professors . . . well, never mind.)
Still, let us seek to be a bit more open-minded. A bit more, if you will, liberal. For there are many altruistic and bright students on campus who will work on the Street after graduation. I am one of them.
I am not greedy, not money-grubbing, not arrogant. I’m not even Republican. What I am is an avid volunteer, a large-dreaming entrepreneur, a striver alive with the energy of creation.
Wall Street is endlessly fascinating. It reveals in real time the shifting appetites of people across the world. It reveals our minds at their most breathtaking: rigorously analytical, yet fueled by a hard-to-figure boldness. On the Street, you live and die by hard work and results. What matters is your own personal achievement.
I have not always felt this way. A year ago, in fact, I criticized how the promise of quick money lures into banking, investment, and trading many students who could have put their talents to use in more innovative climates. I even questioned my own motives: Did not my entrepreneurial endeavors and human interests make me fit for Sand Hill Road rather than Wall Street
However, after speaking with scores of Brown alums now in that industry, I realized the faultiness of my original conceptions. None of the men and women I talked to fit the stereotypical Wall Street profile. No Gorden Gekkos, they! Each one manifested Brown’s spirit of mentorship, its ideal of fraternal citizenship. One had even served in the Peace Corps prior to discovering finance.
True, it’s not all glamor, and like any line of work, there are problems to be addressed. Excessive and unregulated risk taking focused on short-term riches over long-term wealth has admittedly hurt this country. The carousing lifestyles of the Street’s slickest are unsavory to middle America. Understandably, people react negatively to wild displays of luxury, often (though not always rightly) construed as wastefulness.
But are not such vices common to all people, and apparent in every profession involving great power or money? Politicians are the most arrogant spenders around. Well, where is the chorus discouraging students from aspiring to elected office? Where is the great outcry against doctors, many of whom treat on the basis of payment? These days, even lawyers seem to receive fewer heckles.
Money is a touchy subject. Vast concentrations tend to inspire finger-pointing. But if anything, Wall Street should be receiving our praise. It has fueled for more than a century our mighty economic engine. Why not encourage bright, ambitious students enter this vital industry, this nexus of American power? This venerable institution needs sharp minds if it is to continue driving forward our nation.
