Does Big Finance = Big Tobacco now?
Analysts are trying to decipher the content and implications of the Senate’s financial regulation bill. Noam Scheiber and James Pethokoukis have surprisingly similar takes, in that the bill doesn’t directly address the "too big to fail" problem, though Scheiber thinks it does address the problem indirectly. Both takes are worth reading. Touching on a point ...
Analysts are trying to decipher the content and implications of the Senate's financial regulation bill. Noam Scheiber and James Pethokoukis have surprisingly similar takes, in that the bill doesn't directly address the "too big to fail" problem, though Scheiber thinks it does address the problem indirectly.
Analysts are trying to decipher the content and implications of the Senate’s financial regulation bill. Noam Scheiber and James Pethokoukis have surprisingly similar takes, in that the bill doesn’t directly address the "too big to fail" problem, though Scheiber thinks it does address the problem indirectly.
Both takes are worth reading. Touching on a point I have made previously, however, I was struck by this Pethokoukis point:
Wall Street has an enduring PR problem. Yes, big banks are unpopular. But it has gotten so bad that they may not be able to so easily counter their image issues with campaign cash. Getting Wall Street money now has a stigma attached to it like oil and tobacco money. Candidates like Meg Whitman in California and John Kasich are getting hammered for their Wall Street ties. The industry’s continued unpopularity will no doubt spawn further attempts to tax, regulate and restrict the sector.
If the public stays this outraged for this lomg, then Pethokoukis is right. The political problems of finance are becoming so great that we could be talking about a shift in social norms with regard to what is considered "honorable" work.
Of course, paradoxically, this could serve to increase the salaraies of those still willing to go into finance. As Adam Smith pointed out in Wealth of Nations:
[T]he wages of labour vary with… the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment…. Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under-recompensed, as I shall endeavour to show by and by. Disgrace has the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.
Question to readers: Will the social stigma against Big Finance persist or fade as the economy bounces back?
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and the author of The Ideas Industry. Twitter: @dandrezner
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