Women Answer to Recession, says Time Magazine

Wanted: Journalist [sic]

Job requirements: Degree in women’s studies preferred, journalism degree and extensive professional experience may suffice at lower pay.  Position requires in depth knowledge of acceptable PC slant. White flag and knee pads essential.

Inquire at: Time Magazine

This must have been the ad that Michael Scherer responded to when he came on board Time to help the struggling publication eliminate any last vestiges of objectivity and journalistic credibility. Such is the cost, it seems, of attracting more female readers. Either that or Scherer is just trying to ensure job security in a pro feminist workplace.

In his latest offering of obsequious fluff, The New Sherriff’s of Wall Street, Scherer offers up a smorgasbord of non sequiturs implying that the current economic crisis would have been avoided if women ran the world of finance, and that they may well be the messianic solution if we are smart enough to get rid of the men in charge.

Our financial worries were not caused by corruption, Michael postulates, but masculinity, and a healthy infusion of estrogen will return us to prosperity and integrity in the financial realm.  Early on in the piece Scherer states that “Embarrassing tales of a testosterone-filled trading culture tumbled out of the what-went-wrong probes as the Great Recession took hold.”  He supported this statement by referring to another Time article (imagine that) by Barbara Kiviat,  Sizing Up Seven Key Elements of Financial Reform.

His only problem is that there is not one mention of testosterone, or even sex, in the entire article he pointed to.  In fairness, I suppose, Kiviat did use the word “his” once, when referring to a broker. Fact is, the article was rather balanced, and for a moment I thought I had been linked off site to another publication.

Nonetheless, in a sloppy and insulting hoodwink of his readers, Scherer sourced an article that had nothing to do with his misandric claim.  It was just a bald deception intended to distract readers from the fact that Scherer’s blame of all things manly was purely a fig leaf of his own imagination.

That isn’t the least of Scherer’s problems with the piece.  Take that back, it is the least.  All the other problems are much worse.

The article centers on a meeting that took place at an event to celebrate the role of women in finance. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner posed the question “What if Women Ran Wall Street?”  Aside from the answer being that Geithner would get his marching orders from a crowd with longer hair, it appeared the question was posed to imply that women would bring the good values, ethics and judgment that have faltered in the men folk and caused all the problems.  There was, however, no time for an answer as the men were promptly shuttled out of the room so that the women could take over.  (I will leave that one to your own sense of metaphor)

Among the women attending was FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, who Scherer proudly credits as “one of the first federal regulators to sound the alarm about the financial collapse three years ago.”  While Bair, a Bush appointee, was indeed one of the first to forewarn of problems in the housing market, her record, despite being a woman, is far from pristine and stands in stark contrast to her blunt criticism of the banking industry.

Under her direction, the FDIC approved scores of new bank charters in coastal regions that were already suffering from overheated housing markets.  A California lender, IndyMac Bank, went under in July of 2008. It was not even on the agency’s troubled bank list.

Three months later Bair proposed the government modify up to 1.5 million bank loans on failing mortgages with the blessings of Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke.

That’s modify, spelled b-a-i-l o-u-t.

And though Bair continues to talk tough on banks and issues regular demands for transparency, she continues on as a supportive part of the apparatus that is trying to print and spend its way out of deep recession, while still making sure the fat cats get fatter in the process. She continues to support bank investments in derivatives, an oft mentioned culprit in the banking collapse and an investment instrument that Warren Buffet has called a “financial weapon of mass destruction.”

Perhaps Bair is just a lone female voice in the midst of so much masculine insanity.  Because despite her record, and the worsening financial problems, Scherer sings her laurels as though he were strumming a harp outside her window surrounded by a circle of roses and lit candles.

“Of course,” Scherer writes, “Bair was right about the coming crisis.”

Of course, Michael, Bair is right about everything, isn’t she?

Also part of the meeting was Securities and Exchange (SEC) Chair Mary Schapiro and Elizabeth Warren, chair of the congressional oversight panel that Scherer contends is “bird dogging” the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).  TARP may need to be renamed TTTARP, The Troubled Troubled Asset Relief Program.  Despite Warrens heading of  congressional oversight, and copious amounts of spin from Geithner, et al, banks getting the bailout money are continuing to cut lines of credit.

Again, perhaps the problem is that no one is listening.  Warren complained that women are “outsiders” in the financial industry.  Bair readily concurred, saying that “There is a tendency – with some, not all – to value us less, whether it’s our opinion or our work product.”

Dr. Phil is standing by.

In what appears to be an inability – of some, not all – of the women in question to cut it emotionally in the hyper competitive world of successful men, we are getting a mantra of “Nobody listens to me,” which Scherer interprets for us as resultant of misogynistic indifference from a gang of suited brigands bent on shutting the little women out.  Psychotherapists would interpret the same as generic complaints coming into their offices from women about their football obsessed husbands.

In this case it must be said that brigands may be a fair description for many of the men.  An economy on the road to ruin while corporate thugs get filthy rich does illustrate some problems.  But that sort of thing isn’t, and never was, a boys club, except by sheer circumstance.

In the rush to deify women’s values and demonize men’s, perhaps Scherer and the editors of Time should slow down a little and take some lessons from some the other successful female world shakers who have proven, if we follow Scherer’s mentality, apt examples of feminine values and competence.  Martha Stewart comes to mind, as does Leona Helmsley.  Or how about Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who ran the giant company aground with one bad decision like it was the Exxon Valdez?

Or perhaps we can cut a broader swath of relevant information on corporate corruption by citing the fact that over 60% of company embezzlements are committed by women, with an average loss of over $1,000,000, and that women are more likely to embezzle on a large scale than men.

And what does this last factoid say if we consider how woefully under represented women are in positions of corporate authority to begin with?  It says, if we only want to look through Time’s gender-political lens at bare statistics, more women means more stealing.  More women means more corruption, more losses and more problems.

Report on embezzlement.  Just a hint for Time Magazine, the preceding link contains facts relevant to and supportive of my claim.  It’s all the rage.

Is it starting to look like we should shut women out of Wall Street?

No.

And for the same reasons that Make Scherer’s piece on this subject the bigoted and misandric diatribe that it is.

Power has corrupting influences.  It affects all human beings, and indeed it has become so rampant a problem in modern culture that we stand on a precipice of economic doom and may be too far gone in tipping over to stop the momentum.

Whatever it takes to urge us into recovery, or simply to help us hit the unavoidable bottom with less than fatal impact, we won’t find it from injecting mindless and hateful sexual politics into the picture, nor in the deceit of spineless and disastrously incompetent journalists.

Paul Elam is the Editor-in-Chief of Men’s News Daily and the publisher of A Voice for Men.