Ethnography - Wall Street - investment banking
Financial disintegration whether the internet bubble, the junk of bond markets, or the heightened leverage on housing market, there are in most cases explained as inevitable implications of market cycles. In other words, this means that what goes up must always come down in the long run. In Ho' critique of investment banking, she punctures the atmosphere of the abstract that is an all-powerful market to depict the construction of financial markets and especially how they boom and bust. Through an in-depth and investigation into day by day ideologies and understanding of the Wall Street, she describes how one comes to apprehend how financially dominant but highly unstable markets become justified and their production that comes from the restructuring of the larger economy and corporations (Karen 98).
Ho worked as an investment banker and argues that the banker's approach to corporate America and financial markets are inseparable from the strategies and structures of the areas around their workplaces. In her ethnographic scrutiny of the workplaces, they contain voices of stressed and estranged first year associates, alienated and overworked analysts, seasoned managing directors, and undergraduates who are desperate for employment. These investment bankers come from the best and most elite universities and have a brand name the best and the brightest and come into a world of high reward and high risks.
[...] Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street by Karen Ho - Understanding of Ho critique of investment banking Introduction Financial disintegration whether the internet bubble, the junk of bond markets, or the heightened leverage on housing market, there are in most cases explained as inevitable implications of market cycles. In other words, this means that what goes up must always come down in the long run. In Ho' critique of investment banking, she punctures the atmosphere of the abstract that is an all-powerful market to depict the construction of financial markets and especially how they boom and bust. [...]
[...] With reference to this tradition of liquidity and compensation, Wall Street investment bankers redesign the commercial America and shape it in their own image. In this regard, their mission is the establishment of shareholder value and Ho contrasts this statement by demonstrating that their assumptions and practices often results in crisis. Through the connection of actions and values of investment bankers to the development of markets as well as the restructuring of United States corporations, Ho reveals the particular way of life of Wall Street obscured by capitalist globalization and triumphalism readings. [...]
[...] The emphasis of shareholder value and short term profits by Wall Street brings another need to hang on to adaptable skill set that are also relatively flexible. There is an expression that goes be careful what you wish for and this comes into play when you look at the shareholder value that came into distinction as a mantra for numerous business endeavors. Corporate boards continually shower executives with stock options so that they may align them with the shareholders. Companies that are under par in performance find themselves under much scrutiny from activist sponsors. [...]
[...] Ho says that she heard bankers informing her that they were sure that they would not be in the same position as they perceived in the next year and they ensured that they realized the highest profits as possible. Some believed that they made the right decisions, but they were not responsible for the pronouncements Wall Street organizations made if they failed it would not be their fault (Karen 254). Works Cited Karen Ho, Liquidated: Ethnography of Wall Street: Duke University Press 392pages. Barbara Kiviat TIME, An Anthropologist on What's Wrong with Wall Street, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. [...]
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