For most, business as usual despite Wall Street protests

Completing both a call to my broker and my third Chivas, I began to consider PAW’s piece, “For most, business as usual despite Wall Street protests” (On the Campus, Dec. 14). Although the drink was excellent, I had forgotten to remove the silver spoon and almost choked on it; however, Soames, my butler, saved the day.

Good old Soames! I make it a practice never to encourage intimacy in servants, but unbidden, he advised me not to fret about those dirty hippies with their generalized complaints. “It’s simply a circus,” he whined, and I felt much better, especially since my grandson, Parvenu III, who doesn’t need to work at all, recently secured a posh position (without pressure, I promise!) via the Ivy-to-Wall-Street pipeline, which isn’t oily at all.

“Don’t let a little something like a protest movement upset you, Master,” Soames purred. “After all, you’re due at the club soon. Remember that weekly dinner for 60 you’re hosting. You haven’t much time to taste the ’45 Mouton, you know.”

That really got me thinking. Should I introduce discussions of poverty and inequality at my dinner? We all, of course, need a little levity in these trying times. But speaking of time, I don’t have enough of it to bother with quaint protests by lawless demonstrators, especially if they didn’t go to good schools. It’s enough to make me wash my hands, one washing the other, as we often amusingly remark.

Taking to the street indeed! How déclassé! Sliding into the Bentley, I poured another drink and sensed how like a surgeon I am, healing fellow club members via commodity allocation, especially when my Comet cognac gets passed around. 

PAW’s Dec. 14 On the Campus column was dismaying enough. How best to respond? Occupy Princeton did it best, delightfully deconstructing Wall Street’s crimes in its YouTube video. To Occupy’s eloquent statement, I’d add the subheads in investment adviser Leland H. Faust’s op-ed, “Wall Street is a raw deal for the 100 percent” (San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 29).

They are: the cult of a Wall Street superstar, gambling disguised as investing, the bail-me-out syndrome, enormous conflicts of interest, leverage on a grand scale, failure of regulators and the reform law, misappropriation of client funds, worthless rating agencies, golden parachutes soaring high, and breakdown of morality.

Perhaps, before graduating, Princeton seniors should take a cautionary refresher course in ethics, to be taught by professors Peter Singer, Cornel West *80, and Robert George.

What a relief to read the comments by Professor Stanley Katz in the Dec. 14 On The Campus column! However, the same column left one with the unsettling impression that Princeton exists to serve and to perpetuate the 1 percent, and that current undergraduates have no problem with the shamefully worsening wealth gap in the United States. It was déja vu for me when I read that Princeton is a “far less political” campus these days. When President Robert Goheen ’40 *48 addressed the incoming freshmen in 1966, he told us we would be too busy with our studies at Princeton to get involved yet in the wider world. That’s not how things worked out.

The previous tradition of apathy at Princeton gave way to intense political involvement in protesting the Vietnam War, Princeton’s investments in apartheid South Africa, etc. Yes, there’s no doubt that facing the draft awakened some of us from our apathetic slumbers. Still, I don’t agree with Vladimir Teichberg ’96 (A Moment With, Dec. 14) that “all of our institutions have become completely corrupt.” Not Princeton!

When we were at Princeton, we often were reminded that Princeton’s motto is “In the nation’s service and in the service of all nations.” Despite this ideal, we realize that to many within and outside the Orange Bubble, Princeton symbolizes something much less noble: greed, privilege, and elitism. We believe that part of this perception stems from Princeton’s strong institutional support for financial-service firms that have manipulated the political systems and economies of nations around the world to the detriment of those societies and the stability of the global financial system.

We applaud the students of Occupy Princeton for challenging Princeton’s dominant culture of political disengagement. Princeton graduates have the opportunity to choose their own career paths. If they do choose to work in finance, they should know they are entering an industry with a reprehensible historical record of breaching public trust and engaging in practices that run directly counter to Princeton’s motto. We believe that the Occupy Princeton protests send an important message to these financial institutions about the University’s values and serve to educate students considering a career in finance.

The University administration should support those students who are attempting to bring Princeton into a much-needed national conversation about income inequality and economic injustice. Moreover, we urge the administration to stop providing institutional support for recruiting on campus by the worst offenders of the financial industry. Instead, Princeton should redirect its resources to support career options that look beyond the pursuit of profit and allow the University and University graduates to show true leadership and social responsibility, whether in finance or in any other field.

Lastly, we call on fellow alumni to join us in making it clear that “In the nation’s service and in the service of all nations” must include everyone, not just the wealthiest 1 percent.

There is something disconcertingly disingenuous in economics professor Elizabeth Bogan rationalizing the desire to participate in “allocation of resources” as a major reason that financial services are among the most popular of employment options for Princeton seniors, while in the same breath — almost parenthetically — she notes that “it is high income.” It is her choice of euphemism in using “allocation of resources” instead of “controlling the money” that suggests some suspect level of insincerity. It brings to mind other unrelated but euphemistically deceptive covert cloaks, such as “collateral damage” and “reduction in force.” What is there to hide? 

This engaging article by Tara Thean includes the observation that some investment-banking-bound seniors deemed Occupy Wall Street protesters as “not credible enough to be taken seriously.” Yet considering that it was those controlling the money who contributed to the tribulation trifecta of our real-estate bubble (the mortgage bankers), our painfully protracted wars (the defense industries), and our market debacle (the investment firms), these pro­tests by no means are totally un­founded and completely without credibility. Something is clearly not right in the scheme of things in this, our great land, and there is nothing to lose and everything to gain through a thorough scrutiny of the instability of our system.