Update (March 30):

If anyone claims that looking at gender and the way it inflects culture is inherently collectivist, I’d say they need to define collectivism more accurately. The way libertarians define it now, it’s more a term of abuse than a credible unit of analysis, unless it’s qualified pretty heavily.

There is a body of evidence that males are over-represented in highly aggressive behaviors of certain kinds. That isn’t an argument that men are “less moral” or that women are “more moral.” Not at all. For instance, women predominate in certain other kinds of crimes. In studies of child-killing/infanticide, women killers are often represented more heavily when considering certain age groups. Why? Perhaps because children are weaker than women physically and because women spend more time around them and usually have primary care of them. On the other hand, there are fewer female serial killers than male.

The richest financiers in the world are males. That’s a fact. Males are heavily over-represented in the financial industry and it’s a very male-dominated culture. There are complex reasons for that.

But they’re irrelevant to this post.

Do women benefit from welfare-state programs and set-asides and does that affect voting patterns, consumer culture, tax policy, and welfare policy? I’d say, with some caveats, probably yes.

[But conversely, men might benefit from crony capitalism on Wall Street and defense boondoggles, and indirectly, through set-asides from women that benefits families].

But, again, that doesn’t have much to do with this post…

For all I know, some of these financiers were pushed into reckless behavior because their wives were shopaholics or suing them for everything they had.

But, once again, that’s not this post.

So, this isn’t gender bigotry. It’s simply one way of looking at the influence of our own collectivist tendencies (masculinity as it’s constructed, as well as masculinity as a biological reality) on Wall Street culture.

Original Post

Deal Journal tracks down another outsider who spotted Wall Street’s corrupt practices ahead of the pros. Turns out she’s a woman too. There’s something about estrogen that doesn’t lend itself to mega financial swindles. We’re waiting for the Harvard thesis on the gender behind Wall Street’s agenda.

I hate to come to this conclusion, but a lot of the hot-air, recklessness, ego, hype, aggression, and cut-throat competition really does sound like the product of a culture that conflates masculinity with viciousness and braggadocio. Paulson, Weill, Rubin, Dimon…no women in the top sharks. But when you look at whistle-blowers and expose writers, women stand out: Ann Williamson, Padma Desai (both on the Russian crisis) Lucy Komisar, Meredith Whitney, Janet Tavakoli….

“Deal Journal has yet to read “The Big Short,” Michael Lewis’s yarn on the financial crisis that hit stores today. We did, however, read his acknowledgments, where Lewis praises “A.K. Barnett-Hart, a Harvard undergraduate who had just written a thesis about the market for subprime mortgage-backed CDOs that remains more interesting than any single piece of Wall Street research on the subject.”

“Barnett-Hart’s interest in CDOs stemmed from a summer job at an investment bank in the summer of 2008 between junior and senior years. During a rotation on the mortgage securitization desk, she noticed everyone was in a complete panic. “These CDOs had contaminated everything,” she said. “The stock market was collapsing and these securities were affecting the broader economy. At that moment I became obsessed and decided I wanted to write about the financial crisis.”

Back at Harvard, against the backdrop of the financial system’s near-total collapse, Barnett-Hart approached professors with an idea of writing a thesis about CDOs and their role in the crisis. “Everyone discouraged me because they said I’d never be able to find the data,” she said. “I was urged to do something more narrow, more focused, more knowable. That made me more determined.”

She emailed scores of Harvard alumni. One pointed her toward LehmanLive, a comprehensive database on CDOs. She received scores of other data leads. She began putting together charts and visuals, holding off on analysis until she began to see patterns–how Merrill Lynch and Citigroup were the top originators, how collateral became heavily concentrated in subprime mortgages and other CDOs, how the credit ratings procedures were flawed, etc.

“If you just randomly start regressing everything, you can end up doing an unlimited amount of regressions,” she said, rolling her eyes. She says nearly all the work was in the research; once completed, she jammed out the paper in a couple of weeks.”

More here about the young lady whose research probably played a big part in Michael Lewis’ new book, “The Big Short.”

[At least, Lewis acknowledged the research. That puts him several rungs above most celebrity authors].

Meanwhile, I really like that a violinist was involved in this. My own father was a very gifted amateur violinist and Perlman, Zukerman, Oistrakh, Elman, Kreisler, Menuhin and many others defined my childhood.

Perhaps a lifetime of being immersed in real virtuosity and creativity left Barnett-Hart immune to the glamor of the phony maestros of Wall Street …