The University and Wall Street

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.