Why I Quit Wall Street

" Jesus said to His disciples, ' The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to an other, who will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.' " --[Luke 16: 10-13].

In this parable in Luke, a rich man praises his dishonest manager for managing his money in a cunning and fraudulent way. The story is a perfect example of how the lure of money can trap us into dishonesty and corruption. The temptation becomes so bright and alluring, that we lose sight of the people we are trampling along the way.

When I was at university, I studied law and business.  Right away, I got a job working for a financial services firm. My subway stop was -- you guessed it-- on Wall Street. I was starry-eyed. I had made it -- to Wall Street.

This was the heady 1980's.  Everybody on the Street knew the name Lou Ranieri of Solomon Brothers, the working-class kid who had dropped out of college and started out in the mail room at Solomon Brothers. By the 1970's, Ranieri had invented the private mortgage-backed security. By the 1980's when I arrived on Wall Street, Ranieri was regarded with awe, as if he were some kind of a god.

At first, as I was learning this Wall Street business, I tried to tell myself that my work, financing public projects, was an important and civic stewardship. As the years passed, however, I began to see dark clouds on the horizon.

My unease was about far more than the fact that, as a woman in a man's field, I was required by my employer to wear heels, stockings, and a skirt, never pants.  Even my silk blouse, with the floppy tie at the neck, felt like a fraud.

The argument for the mortgage-backed security was lofty: that, investors buying up mortgage  securities from the banks, would free up capital for others and would support the housing market.  Good for everyone, right?

But, the beginning of the end came when I was at a conference on securitization, and listened to talks on the securitization of home loans, car loans, boat loans, student loans, and even foreclosed tax receipts. The message was -- if it moves, if it has an income stream, securitize it!

One speaker tellingly said that, the only downfall was that, as demand for loans increased, quality could go down; in which case, everything would collapse.

Another "beginning of the end" came for me, when an investment banker pitched a bond security collateralized by junk bonds. He reassured us that the security was perfectly safe, because it was 110% collateralized.

A friend and I, sitting in this meeting, looked at each other and could hardly keep ourselves from bursting out laughing. After all, 110% of nothing is STILL nothing.

I was noticing that the Rating Agencies were being pressed to assign high ratings to securities that they did not even understand. Auditors would come in and have no idea how to analyze the structure of the securities.

Investment bankers were bundling their junk asset-backed securities, and giving them fancy alphabet soup names-- Were the investment bankers just trying to wrap their wares in shiny paper, to get the faulty loans off their books?

My "epiphany" came when I realized that behind all these loans were REAL people-- with real loans, real debt, real homes. I finally saw the human fallout that happens when we marry Wall Street greed with people's personal lives. With a gasp of breath, I said to myself, 'They cannot DO that to people.'

It could be a melt-down. A disaster. There would be foreclosures, bankruptcies, suicides, homelessness, divorce, child abuse, depression, substance abuse -- you name it.

I could not reconcile what I was even tangentially involved in as a banker, with my identity as a Christian. How could I ignore how this fraudulent stewardship was destroying people's lives-- while at the same time claiming that as a Christian, I deserved God's riches both here and in His Kingdom? I could not serve both God and money.

I told my Division Head about my concerns. Even if he possessed little concern about the ordinary citizen, being involved with this kind of product could easily destroy the bank's reputation. But, I was accused of "concocting doomsday scenarios."

So, in 2001 I got out. I became a stay-at-home mom. Co-workers thought I was crazy. Why would I throw all this away? I cried when I told my boss I was leaving. I had worked feverishly to become Vice President in my department. The division manager was furious with me. I could hear her bad-mouthing me on the phone to Head Office, venting about my "shocking disloyalty".

 I put raising a son and caring for my family FIRST.  Nurturing. Making meals. Tucking my baby in at night.  Reading bedtime stories. Raking leaves. Running errands. Making morning coffee for my husband. Dusting. Weeding the garden.

It all felt so right. But, in 2008, as I watched the financial crisis unfold, it was all as shocking and tragic and inhumane as I thought it would be.

Suddenly, all over again, I did not want to be right.

I have learned that if you are not trustworthy with the dishonest wealth of this world, which often compounds exponentially off the backs of the poor and the struggling; THEN, how can you even dare make a claim for a place in the Kingdom of Heaven, where "the foundations of the city are made of jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, carnelian, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst; the twelve gates made of pearl; and the street of the city paved in gold?" -[Revelation 21:21].

HOW would I even dare?

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