How Wall Street is Killing Job Growth

Pam Martens, a central figure in the fight against sexual harassment on Wall Street, has a perceptive post today in CounterPunch on how Wall Street is killing job growth.

I was really taken with her description of some of the death-related imagery that the Street uses:

Wall Street is so steeped in destruction that the symbols of death are everywhere. Wall Street calls the big newspaper ads they take out to herald the launch of their market offerings a “tombstone.” (To understand how appropriate that is, consider the billions in bond and stock offerings they raise for Big Tobacco.) What does Wall Street call the completion of a buy or sell order: an “execution” . . . Wall Street calls an order to complete a trade without any reduction in quantity a “fill or kill.” This could just as reasonably be called a “fill or cancel” order but it’s so much more fun for the thundering herd to race around a trading floor screaming “kill it, kill it!”

It's a long and exceptionally nuanced piece, and is must reading.

© 2010 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.