Karen Ho's book looks at investment banking scams

Karen no is a anthropology professor in Minnesota somewhere and she went undercover to wite an comprehensive study of Wall Street firms in her book liquidated . This book took along time to read and some parts I had to read twice but basically the book is about how the culture of quick firings in financial services puts ascertain culture and outlook of these folks. The people in this industry many times have the fates of workers in other industries on their hand and gives them a feeling of power that they yield on others. Layoffs are a fAbric of investment banking and Karen worked several years in this field to study their habits. She highlights people she talked and met in this journey through this industry that cuts other industries yet constantly needs government to bail them out and retain their bonuses.

  As Karen points out they make demands to corporations to keep capital cheap so stocks remain high for their shareholders. At times the people in invent,ent backing make great bonuses and salaries although often their job can come to an end 

overnight. All of the people in the top firms come from a few Ivy League schools and most likely influential families and the sense of entitlement is ridiculously high from these people. They feel they are the brightest people in America and deserve to be paid that way.   I beleive most of people working in inventment banking only get to top schools and many times cheat their way to top grades in college. The work that they do usually does not involve economic productivity and they are never paid for actual performance but for number of translations just moving money around. 

They get these tremendous bonuses regardless how bad their investing is. Karen shows that the people in investment banking and Wall Street are basically there from the White male networks and for other people it is hard to join this exclusive club. This is a club that few could imagine as there is no cap or pay for performance and they can be as bad as one can be in investing yet retain positions and verios jobs in the field depending on who they know. Karen no pretty much sums up the trading world as a banking structure primarily focused on getting as many deals done in short term regardless the consequences for society and their power and ability to capital is what keeps them powerful with government making their own rules and lobbying against any that would regulate these bastards.