Why Women Should Control Wall Street

So last week when I received my TIAA-CREF statement (like many professors, I assume) you might have heard me scream from Milwaukee.  But now I have a better idea –- I should be running the market!  Tim Harford, a columnist for the Financial Times and author of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World explained last week on NPR that men are too hormonal to be running Wall Street.  Yes, let me repeat that, men are too hormonal.  As Mr. Harford explains,

There’s a former Wall Street trader who is now a researcher at Cambridge University in the UK. His name is John Coates. What he told me was that when he ran a trading desk in Wall Street during the last dot com boom and bust, he found that his traders were exhibiting almost physical symptoms of mania. So they were punching the air. They were yelling. There was – not to put too fine a point on it – there was more pornography floating around in the office. This is of course is a very masculine, macho environment. But what John Coates also noticed was that the few women who were on the trading floor didn’t seem to be affected.

 

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Priorities for the Next President: Securities Regulation

The current crisis our nation faces on Wall Street and in the broader economy will be the primary focus of the next President. The crisis is complex, with many facets, and any solution will be equally complex. Issues such as the effectiveness of regulatory oversight versus deregulation, the transparency of specific types of financial transactions and market actors under current law, and the proper accounting rules to ensure an accurate depiction of a banking institution’s financial health will all be part of the debate over how to resolve the present crisis and how to prevent a future recurrence. However, my advice to the next President is that he should not overlook the beneficial role that private civil lawsuits under the securities laws can play in deterring risky market behavior.

Much has been made of the greed and speculative fervor that gripped the investment professionals on Wall Street. Clearly bets were being made with borrowed money that risked the very existence of institutions that are necessary to preserve the liquidity of capital in our markets. Expanding the oversight of the Treasury Department, increasing the transparency of transactions that involve derivatives and hedge funds, and re-examining accounting rules may all be necessary components of a plan to avoid such risk-taking in the future, but they will not be sufficient in and of themselves. From personal experience in the boardroom, I can vouch that nothing deters executive approval of speculative investment strategies as much as the prospect of a potential civil lawsuit if the deal goes sour.

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British Reaction to Crash of 2008 and the Bonus Pool for Lehman Executives

Moneychanginghands The reaction is rightfully upset after reading news like this:

Up to 10,000 staff at the New York office of the bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers will share a bonus pool set aside for them that is worth $2.5bn (£1.4bn), Barclays Bank, which is buying the business, confirmed last night.

The revelation sparked fury among the workers’ former colleagues, Lehman’s 5,000 staff based in London, who currently have no idea how long they will go on receiving even their basic salaries, let alone any bonus payments. It also prompted a renewed backlash over the compensation culture in global finance, with critics claiming that many bankers receive pay and rewards that bore no relation to the job they had done.

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