From an economic standpoint, will 2010 be the year of the woman? As part of the Roosevelt Institute's ongoing 'Feminomics' series, running on the New Deal 2.0 blog, I was asked to reflect on women's changing roles in the economy. Here's my take on how the New Deal advanced the cause of women's equality.
In case you haven't heard, women are leading the charge on financial reform. In the spirit of celebrating their contributions, I've put together a list of the top five heroes of 2009, in the hopes that their work will inspire us in the coming year. So, channeling my best Wayne Newton (and I could pull this off if I shaved my goatee and took off the top 3/4 of my mustache), "This one's for the ladies: "
1) First, I'll start with Yves Smith, who I came across end of last summer. She has 25 years in financial services, worked for, amongst others, Goldman, McKinsey, and Sumitomo, and is also a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Business School. Her must-read blog is Naked Capitalism. She has shown great knowledge and greater courage -- and from my experience, these two traits are too rare together. Her writing is exceptional, and if you want a good overview of the financial mess and what's gone on over the past year and half, I highly recommend paging through her blog's archive. The president should replace Geithner with her. Time we had our first woman Treasury Secretary.
2) Next, Elizabeth Warren. Either mistakenly, which I believe is the case, or purposefully, in which case I'd have to reevaluate my opinion of Harry Reid, Warren was appointed by Reid to head the Congressional Oversight Panel for all the money being handed to the banks. Warren is Professor of Law at Harvard and wrote the excellent book The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. So, she documented the great underbelly of Wall Street's debt bubble -- particularly its destruction of a big chunk of working America. I don't know if Reid thought he was getting some doddering academic when he appointed her, but instead he got a strong and energetic public advocate. There's been a pretty hard effort to discredit Ms. Warren, and Yves Smith takes a look at the hatchet job done by NPR here. I've been nothing but impressed when I've heard her talk, and strongly second the motion by William Greider to give her subpoena powers.
3) In October 2007, working for Oppenheimer, Meredith Whitney wrote a report calling Citi the pile junk it is. Amazingly, she was pretty much the only one in the whole industry to do so. Since then, Whitney has been straight at the big banks, holding nothing back on what bad shape they're in. She's the Anti-Geithner. In the middle of latest pop in the stock market, which has gotten the banks $50 billion in new capital over the past couple months, Whitney appeared on CNBC and called the banks' profits "manufactured" by the government, and stated things would begin heading south again. She's an eagle above the weasels scurrying below on Wall Street.
4) Gretchen Morgenson writes for the NYT business section. In the last year and half, she has written far and away some of the best coverage of the financial crisis in the mainstream media. Most importantly, she put Mr. Blankfein at the meeting with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke when the bailout of AIG was decided to the advantage of Goldman for at least 14 billion. Again, if you want to read some good things on the last year and half, scroll through her articles in the Times' archive (The Nation did an ok piece on her, but unfortunately, it suffers from the author's "objective journalism" disease).
5) Finally, I'd throw in Sheila Bair, who was appointed head of the FDIC by none other than George W. Bush. Ms. Bair has frequently tangled with the boys in the government, taking on Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, and Summers. She's stated repeatedly the banking crisis is not over, tried to slow the foreclosure tsunami, and most recently stated again Citi is a pile of crap and needs to be placed into receivership.
These women are inspiring! Citizens all, helping to breathe life into this old republic.
This post originally appeared on New Deal 2.0.
Obama, are you listening?
I think It's going to be a while until women stop openly expressing the bigory that they hold; and probably longer still until they stop acting on those beliefs. Right now all women are presumed ethical, and therefroe good, and all men evil. You hate us so much but you neglect to remeber that we built a society that has allowed women to self-actualize. Do you really have to jab a sharp stick in our eyes every time you can? A simple thank you will do.
Sheila Bair may be a Republican but she's more beholden to common sense and good business practices than the Wall Street cronies like Geithner at Treasury who tried to have her fired this past spring.
Thanks for the recognition of these people who value responsibility and are working for a better America -- not shaking it down, like some others.
Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA).
It would be a remarkable thing if this group of progressive women coalesced to form the nucleus of a financial reform movement. I sense a power and dedication--not to mention honesty and clarity of purpose--from this group of concerned citizens.
If you did this, you needn't worry about what loopholes the corporations were using (the CEO's 2 year old neice donated $1000 to the campaign? Really?), because there would be as much public money in the race as campaign contributions.
Don't like the 50-50 rule? Match all contributions up to $500, at a ratio that would match last election cycle's spending on that race. For example, if you had a race where one person had several big donors give millions, you might have a 5-1 match the next cycle, which would only provide $2500 match for a $1,000,000 donation, but would provide that same $2500 match to a $500 donation to the challenger.
You may be thinking that won't be enough-it will. Right now you commonly see the incumbant or favored candidate with a multi-million dollar war chest, and the everyday man with a few hundred thousand. But if you had public funding, it would go from $10,000,000 vs 100,000 to $20,000,000 vs $10,100,000. This dilutes the power of the dollar, and greatly increases the power of the strong message and volunteers!
Consumer protections as proposed by Elizabeth Warren may me possible sooner if congress and the president have the wisdom to act on her sage advice.