mentioned by Jim Devine is reachable at the extension /HOME/NEWS/BOOKS/.
Here are a few choice pieces.
Sunday, February 8, 1998
Bull and Bear
WALL STREET: A History. By Charles R. Geisst . Oxford University
Press: 404 pp., $30 ; WALL STREET: How It Works and for Whom. By Doug
Henwood . Verso: 372 pp., $25 ;
By JOHN MICKLETHWAIT
Indeed, in many ways, Wall Street is entering uncharted
waters where its history is only a partial guide to its future.
From this point of view, there is an argument for reading no more
than the first two-thirds of "Wall Street" and then turning to Doug
Henwood's book, which has the same title but is a theoretical
broadside, not a history. Henwood, the editor of Left Business
Observer, would seem to be a living oxymoron: a socialist who is
fascinated by finance. In fact, the same could be said of Karl Marx.
I always knew there was something strange about Doug; he's a socialist
fascinated by finance, hence a "living oxymoron," and Papa Karl exhibited
the same grotesque contradiction. Is this guy for real?
The main difference is that Henwood has a sense of humor (one has to
admire anybody who includes, among the various blurbs on the back of
his book, the following comment from Norman Pearlstine, the former
executive editor of the Wall Street Journal: "You are scum. . . .
[I]t's tragic that you exist.")
Was there some old personal score being settled thus, Doug?
Wow, if anyone told me that, he'd be well advised to carefully guard
the future of his own existence.
Dismissing Henwood as an amusing irritant will doubtless comfort
the partners at Goldman, Sachs. Yet they would do well to consider one
recurring theme of his book and Geisst's: Wall Street tends to go too
far. Inequality in America is on the increase. The downsizing that
Wall Street has so applauded over the last decade has created a much
wider class of malcontents than did previous waves of restructuring.
Yes, and if they end up riding the rods like in the '30s, they'll at least
take their laptops along; this army will stay in touch with itself.
The middle managers who lost their jobs bitterly resent the huge pay
packets being given out to those who orchestrated their downfall. As
this generation of Daniel Drews is "limoed" back home to their
penthouses on Fifth Avenue, they should wonder how the next generation
will cope with the bitter harvest that they have sown.
Not likely: that's way too far past the next quarterly statement.
Surprisingly few Peter Druckers in that crowd.
John Micklethwait Is the New York Bureau Chief of the Economist. he Is
the Co-author With Adrian Wooldridge of "The Witch Doctors: Making
Sense of the Management Gurus" (Times Business)
There's also a mini-symposium of 6 notables on the Manifesto,
the optimal downer being - Who else? - David "There and Back" Horowitz,
that established paragon of living oxymoronhood.
valis
