Will it take a movement of financial dissidents to initiate the much needed structural and ethical reform within the financial industry?

Challenging the establishment is as old as history. Sometimes going out directly to the public is the avenue needed to have one's voice truly heard. The collapse of...

Don't know how many of you had a chance to see the poignant movie Hugo.

Hugo, rendered an orphan and made to live with a rather negligent relative, spends his childhood tending the clocks of Paris. I was struck by two scenes.

The first -- Hugo, in his...

Industrialized nations face a humanistic challenge -- big debts, stalled or slow growth, maybe for years to come. Yet, promises and obligations remain.

A while back, I watched an interview with Mortimer Adler. One of many interviews and writings, covering topics such as justice, truth,...

Didn't get in on the first try. There were a few rejections before I made it into the Salomon Brothers sales and trading training class. It happened to be the class of 1985, immortalized in Michael Lewis' book, Liar's Poker."

Recently came back from our 26-year reunion. And as reunions...

Much has been said about the role of Congress and the Federal Reserve and Wall Street in largely engineering an unprecedented financial bubble, in the trillions. Two enabled, the other executed. Then, human nature went to work.

The Titanic hit an iceberg when those at the levers pushed it too...

Over the weekend, I walked past a playground. I stopped to look through the black iron fence -- children smiling, carefree, running from swing to monkey bars. All against the backdrop of a beautiful sunny day, azure sky. I was struck by a flash forward moment that got me thinking...

"Financial occupation" is what a Greek journalist said Greece was under. I suppose the journalist means, held hostage by world bankers. Wonder how many Americans feel the same, burdened by debt -- be it underwater mortgages, student loans, or credit card debt, not to mention public debt. Greece, among other...

Imagine my surprise and joy, when up popped an email, with three heartfelt words and a link from my son.

Poignant, this soulful story of love and caring -- a lioness and her cub.

Stark contrast to the headlines I was reading at that very moment --...

Who hasn't heard these words from someone you know, a friend of a friend, maybe someone just out of school...? Words of anguish, no doubt.

The visible fallout from unemployment is disheartening enough. The invisible loss, the scarring, has even deeper implications. For some, the loss of a job equates...

Americans owe $753 billion more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

This has real life impact on the ground. The other day I chatted with someone who relayed that half of the condos in their building are in foreclosure. Theirs is now worth half of...

I'll tell you ladies, a few decades on Wall Street, and there's not much left for the imagination. Can't tell you how many times I thought, perfect training ground for stamina, espionage, covert operations....

Who needs Langley!

We've come a long way (more to do) from the way it used...

I received an email from someone who was deeply touched by the way a gelateria near her home conducts its business. Their motto, Ante Lucrum Nomen -- "reputation before profit." My former mentor in the business echoed the same sentiment.

What happened along the way?

We've had...

Don't know what you're thinking, but I'm thinking that somethin's in the air. In a previous blog, I asked "What Happened to Shame?" Maybe it's time to ask "What Happened to Scruples?"

Scruples is defined as "a doubt or hesitation that troubles the conscience or that comes from...

Frankenstein was a "failed artificial life experiment" that went badly wrong. Ours incubated in financial laboratories -- the result of complex "innovative" financial engineering. It manifested itself in the bank credit crisis of 2008, never left us, merely moved on to manifest itself in the ongoing US/Eurozone government debt crisis....

After the failure of rating agencies to rate securities properly as to risk preceding the subprime meltdown (bundled securities rated AAA with near worthless underlying loans), don't know what to make of S&P's downgrade of U.S. debt from AAA to AA+ Friday evening.

Is it a...

It's tough for people out there. The last thing we need is more of the Tower of Babel -- confusion and noise. To be confused when plenty of us are confused already as to the direction of the U.S. What has gripped us, that we have come to a point...

Good for Elizabeth Warren for taking a stand. Coming from Wall Street, I know exactly what that means. You take the heat when you come up against the phony or the intimidators. All for wanting to do the right thing!

In a recent Oversight Committee hearing, Professor Warren

I think I learned basic budgeting, and finance, at age 7.

On a weekly basis, I received a $.25 allowance (back in the mid-sixties), so long as my chores were done, homework completed. At an impressionable age, I learned "ins" need to equal "outs." On Saturday mornings, I'd accompany my...

Last week's headlines put me in a reflective mode. It got me thinking about truth.

Leonardo da Vinci once said, "Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness."

Well, falsehood creates a convoluted mess, a sense of disorder. Hold that thought, and while you...

I received an email the other day (we'll get to it shortly). It crystallized why writing, blogging, spotlighting and commenting, together as a community for humanity matters.

Stay with me.

I entered the workforce in 1980 at a trailblazing time for women. Yet, I found the corporate workplace easier...