Salomon Brothers and the Meaning of Manhood

                                                                                       

ABOVE: U.S. GRANT, COMMANDER OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC; HARVEY CUSHING, NEUROSURGICAL PIONEER; JOHN GUTFREUND, CEO SALOMAN BROTHERS

Reading Liar's Poker,  the memoir by Michael Lewis about his coming of age at the Wall Street firm, Salomon Brothers, is oddly familiar for anybody who has ever been sucked up into the maw of a large, "prestigious" university hospital training program.  Easily recognizable is the talk of how very lucky you are, and how often you are told this.  Oh, you are so fortunate to have been selected for the great, glittering prize of Salomon Brothers, or for Columbia P&S or for Mass General or Johns Hopkins--when so many others were just bleeding for the chance.  
You are  poised on the precipice of great good fortune, and  lucky  to have this chance to succeed, to go on to dazzling fortune and professional success, but also conveyed is the risk  you will fail, that you will be spit out and wind up "on the street" as a homeless person, or, almost as bad, you may wind up a failed professional. 

That's how they do at these august institutions, (as they would say in Baltimore).

They make you think you are special and they get you to try as hard as you can to "succeed," and they are reasonably clear about how success will be judged.

At Salomon brothers, success is measured in dollars; at the university hospital, it is based on less numerical criteria, but at either place there is a familiar aspect of your success being judged by older, established, powerful people who have demonstrated why they have reached the pinnacle and their success justifies their power over you.

Of course, whether it's the army or the hospital or a Wall Street bank, the people who succeed are often sleaze balls of the lowest order.

But that's not really what struck me. What struck me was the imagery at Salomon:  The successful, older, established high priests were all described in terms of the "jungle," and they were, admiringly described as "ruthless," remorseless, powerful predators.  

Now, think about that. What were these men doing?  Were they cutting into a belly?  Were they trying to save a life?  Were they faced with a decision to send a thousand men charging across a field into an uncertain fate?  Did they have astronauts aloft who they had to bring back safely to earth?  

No.  The worse thing that faced these masters of the universe was the prospect of losing money.  They might lose money  for the firm, money which could be made back the next hour or the next day. 

John Gutfreund, after all, was nothing more than a salesman, or a gambler.  Those who dreamed of being like him, dreamed not of the glory of saving a life, while the family in the waiting room down the hall prayed. The 20 somethings who wanted to be the next Gutfreund did not imagine themselves faced with the wrenching decisions facing the general of the Army of the Potomac, as he considered his next move against Lee and thousands of lives and the fate of a nation hung in the balance.

The young brokers told each other how cool they were because they were risk takers, daring young turks about to do figurative battle on the trading floor, wielding not swords or scalpels but telephone head sets and slick talk. 
But what, really, did these young hot shots risk?
Did these young brokers risk throwing away their youth?  No. Their training program was roughly five months.  It takes more time to train an apprentice tool and dye maker, a welder or an auto worker. Unlike the poor pre medical student, who risks wasting four years, these brokers were risking five months. 

The Salomon neophytes emulate a man who is  simply betting and selling and putting neither life nor limb nor really even his own fortune at risk. All he risks is making less money today than he has on other days.

And what of the other Salomon"predators?"  Are they in any way really brave or fearsome or lethal or wondrous or admirable? What have they done to be so adulated by these best and brightest graduates of Princeton and MIT and Harvard and Yale and Penn? They have placed bets, won some of them and made money.

Mothers, don't let your sons grow up to be brokers. Oh, sure, they will make money, and never have to worry about starving. And they will do it without risking their lives. Unlike the men who go down to the sea, fishing on the dangerous oceans (as real predators) Unlike men (and women who serve in the military) their is no risk of bodily harm.  

But when they look back to write their memoirs, at the end of their 5th or 6th decade, what sort of life will they have to look back upon?  Who will they think about, when they think about who they affected as they did their jobs?

The fact is all the talk of ferocity is a cover to hide the lack of that very quality.  It is true people often criticize others for traits and failings of which they secretly know they are most guilty--in fact, these "men" speak of ferocity and importance to mask their own sense of timidity and unimportance. They are weak and by  choice, worthless.   On some level, in the dark of night, they must realize what they are. 
They are politically correct, socially acceptable gamblers--an inclination which can be exciting when there is something really important at risk.

I heard Martin Luther King once, in college. He gave a talk which I'm sure he had given a hundred times. I stood on the lawn outside Sayles Hall with a lot of my classmates and listened as his speech was broadcast out to the College Green from within the hall.  He said, quite simply, that sometimes you can gain the world and lose your soul in the process.  Pretty standard stuff, I imagine, from a Southern Baptist. 

But I was a freshman in college and it seemed like a pretty powerful idea to me.