To begin to explore the psychology of this often merciless, but always fascinating industry, it helps to understand how the mindset is rewarded on Wall Street. Nothing roils Main Street more than the prospect of yet another year of ‘abundant’ bonuses on Wall Street, especially during these trying times. Even in the rolling wake of the most recent market debacles, while the public mood was mollified briefly, it did not take too long for things to get back to business as usual. In June, 2009, Chris Blackhurst from the London Evening Standard unabashedly announced: “Eat what you kill: Why bonuses never went away…bonuses are back scream the headlines. Rubbish. In truth they’ve never been away.”
The perception on Main Street are that we—the taxpaying public, the generally voiceless investing masses—are being played. Human beings have notoriously short memories. We bailed out monster firms, forced to accept that some were “too big to fail,” while the bonuses just kept rolling along. Yet, for someone, such as me, with a ringside view of some of the inner workings that power the Street, this is no surprise. Rather, this is the cold, harsh reality that is the manifestation of the infallibility of human nature, on full display.
This is very much a creature of our own creation. We have short memories, we generally believe what we are told, and as long as it’s not too close to home, we can easily engage in rationalization and denial even if these mechanisms are supposed to be unconscious. We nevertheless tend to bolster our own defensive structures if only to survive another day.
Even if we wanted to, we do not have the manpower or the wherewithal to police and/or monitor our societal relationship with money. Even as we gripe, legislators are stealthily removing some of the teeth of financial reform, defunding investigative arms now that the din has died down. Greed, corruption, and arrogance are endemic in this industry, derivatives of the psychological fixation on money above all else. Money has been perceived as the salve of the mind to solve all, excuse all, and forgive all transgressions. Yet, it is not.
I often think of a $1 billion hedge fund producer I treated who once told me that, “I warrant every nickel, because I make the fat cats fatter and richer.” Or, even more unsettling, the admission of another patient, a comparatively minor Street player (who nevertheless made several million dollars a years on a fairly consistent basis) who said to me: “I grew up dirt poor with an alcoholic, murderous father and a depressed mother. I deserve everything I make. I’m better and smarter than 99 percent of the fools on the Street. Frig all of them. I eat everything I kill, and I am a killer. I can’t stand people who don’t know how to make real money. I’ve spent the last 15 years doing whatever I’ve wanted. I’ve got all the freedom and power money can buy, but I am here today begging for your help. I hate myself and I’m smart enough to realize that that I experience no true joy or any real happiness in my life.” He was brutally correct. Nothing would ever be enough for him, and he was far from free. Money had stripped away his dignity, any semblance of normal reality, and shackled him with dark narcissistic and megalomaniacal chains that were slowly dragging him in a downward spiral into the abyss of depression, loneliness, and isolation. But thank the Gods that he was courageous enough, and desperate enough, to reach out.
In a human being’s brain there is a moral code which makes humans unique. “In God We Trust” is at our roots as a culture. That slogan is imprinted on all of our currency and coinage. Morality and money are inexorably intertwined. We have rules and regulations. On the Street FPs struggle with a loss of humanity, and the temptation of violate others and breach fiduciary responsibility. In this industry, is everything relative to the money that can be produced? I work with the men and women in the financial trenches, enriching and protecting their clients, their firms, and themselves in a money-mad world. Ultimately, the relationship between the money and the mind is serious business. In all of our lives, but more so for the financial services industry, money governs dynamics of power, respect, fear, control, freedom, and more.
Money can give people enormous power and control over others, especially people we are close to, and/or beholden to for professional or personal reasons. Money inspires fear, respect, and even loathing. Think for a moment how do people in Wall Street culture handle and/or comprehend the kind of money that the top 30 hedge fund managers make? Where is the reality? Does reality even make a difference? Perhaps this is surrealism at its finest; it is dreamlike and hypnagogic. And yet it is what most FPs aspire to; to accumulate as much money as possible in order to feel as safe and strong as possible. This is their inherent existential issue which they are usually unaware of until they enter treatment. Helping FPs develop an understanding of wall street psychology can only enhance their skill sets across a myriad of dimensions.
How long can this go on in our culture? Is the concept of equity a genuine, feasible value in our society or a marketing pipedream sponsored by liberal governments and idealists? These issues continue to engage us even as we seemingly emerge from the Great Recession. What in fact is reality, and what in fact determines value; or is it just about the “madness of crowds.” Or is the credo “eat what you kill” still the true operational ethic of the Street?