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Women Scorned
If only someone had listened when two bold women—Brooksley Born and Sheila Bair—sounded alarms, much of the current meltdown could have been averted.
Our country’s history is littered with the bodies of women whose important works were dismissed, ridiculed, and otherwise diminished. Although women make up the majority of our population, the bold ideas of women are frequently silenced by men who disagree.
Today we find ourselves facing the country’s greatest economic challenge since the stock market crash of 1929. The culprits are many for our current financial mess, but the main cause is a little corner in the finance world called derivatives.
Women who attempt to raise the alarm are hysterics, meddlers, busybodies, and worriers.
The implosion of the derivatives market and the subsequent collapse of many of our prominent financial institutions could have been averted. Back in 1998, there was a clear and unequivocal warning. A woman by the name of Brooksley Born, then chairwoman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, warned Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers of the risks inherent in not regulating derivatives.
Michael Greenberger, a senior director at the commission at the time, noted: “Brooksley was this woman who was not playing tennis with these guys and not having lunch with these guys. There was a little bit of the feeling that this woman was not of Wall Street.”
Summers, then deputy to Rubin, took it from there: “In early 1998, Mr. Rubin’s deputy, Lawrence H. Summers, called Ms. Born and chastised her for taking steps he said would lead to a financial crisis,” The New York Times reports.
That’s the same Larry Summers who a decade later has been rewarded by President-elect Obama with an appointment as director of the National Economic Council (a position that does not require Senate approval).
The same day he appointed Summers, Obama announced his pick for treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner. Within weeks of his appointment, Geithner elected to summarily dismiss and silence another woman who had spoken out: FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair.
Bair has numerous advocates on Wall Street. Unlike the disastrous Troubled Assets Relief Program (“TARP”) put forward by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chief Ben Bernanke, Bair has a bottom-up approach that deals with the root of the problem, foreclosures.
Under TARP, within weeks $350 billion of taxpayer money had been dumped into buying up stakes in certain chosen banks—unfortunately, this did nothing to unfreeze the credit markets. Bair had sought a small fraction of that amount to stem the tide of foreclosures. As reported in Barron’s last week: “The FDIC leader was turned down by Treasury when she sought $25 billion of the government’s $700 billion TARP plan to provide a federal guarantee and loss-sharing on approximately two million modified home mortgages. But Bair’s idea clearly had merit.”
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
This is the world I know, too. I write about professional nursing and its absence from the healthcare reform table across all venues. Media refuses to cover professional nursing issues, and so the public doesn't know how it directly affects whether they live or die - or recover more slowly and with preventable complications, harm and suffering. But no one reads what I write, let alone pay attention to what I've uncovered.
I'm also a whistle-blower and have been blacklisted out of my profession. Progressive, neocon - it's all the same: women's voices are oppressed, suppressed, demeaned and degraded.
http://revolutionredux.wordpress.com
My mother was an intruder in another "man's world" -- computer programming and system design. There are some huge failures there too, albeit not as sexy. I wish we would learn.
My business partner is a wonderful lady and I rely on her to keep me in line:)
Sexism is a profoundly destructive force in this country. The recent election of the nation's first black President is the culmination of centuries of effort by all Americans to include blacks. The same effort must be made on behalf of women. Women must support one another and step up to the front lines to challenge sexism, which is most grossly manifested in women's exclusion from what Barney Frank rightly recognizes as boys clubs. Women must stop being afraid to speak up and denouce sexism when we see it. From the constant comments on our appearance to the dismissals of our ideas, sexism is happening to us all the time. We need more articles like this. It ought to be just as socially unacceptable to be sexist as it is to be racist. No more sexism in polite society!
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
no, pangloss. The implication is not that women are better, more honest, or smarter than men. The well-founded implication is that when wise words are spoken by women they are more likely to be discounted and ridiculed than the same words spoken by men. Because the the smart women in this article are *women* they were told to shut up and dismissed as being out-of-the-club, reaching beyond their place, and hysterical.
@lurker
This article has serious merit. I profoundly disliked Mrs. Siskind's last article on the DB and said as such. However, I get the implication that women should be included simply because they're women. In the new Administration's case, I'd like to believe he's simply choosing who he thinks is most qualified (and the Summers pick is especially polarizing, given his past comments).
Annie 2013----come join us at The New Agenda, www.thenewagenda.net. Your voice and experiences will be heard and valued. You have a chance to turn your bitter experience into an opportunity to help other women avoid the harrowing treatment you have endured.
The politics of 2008 have made it crystal clear that we need a new fix on sexism.
Benjamin A. Barres, a member of the faculty at Stanford Medical School, is a transgendered man. He has said that since he's become a man, the men in charge listen to what he has to say. They have even told him that his work is superior to his "sister" Barbara, which is who Benjamin was before his gender change. Google him and read what he has to say about gender in a very scholarly way.
If anyone still believes that sexism doesn't exist in America, or that it is harmless, or ok, WAKE UP!!! The women's voices mentioned in this article, if heeded, would have put us in a much better position than we are today. If you still don't see the sexism, you need to do some soul searching.
I left the following post on The New Agenda site, regarding her organizations demand that 52% of President Obama's cabinet must be female, as well as her relentless antagonism towards him:
Amy,
Wouldn't it be fairer to wait until all the cabinet positions are filled before declaring the percentage is less than Clinton or Bush?
A question that strikes me about this blog is:
Is The New Agenda truly about advancing women's issues, or about nursing a seemingly infinite well of resentment against President-Elect Obama for having the audacity to defeat Hillary Clinton in the primary season?
Now that the "Candidate of your lifetime" has joined the team for the good of the country, it would be great if we, as Americans who are members of historically excluded groups, display a keen interest in how Obama's actions will lead the country forward, even while keeping one eye on the group's particular participation interests.
The point of this election was that ISSUES do still matter. Even though Obama's close alignment on major issues with Hillary seems to have no impact of the feelings toward him at The New Agenda.
But this Blog seems to have abandoned all substantive issues so that you can pursue "The Narrow Agenda" of gender, to the total exclusion of issues that "Divide women." Well, issues are what divide EVERYONE, black, white, male, female, young, old. The only way to avoid dividing any group is to essentially be about NOTHING substantial, except chromosomally-defined group identity.
Issues are why I, as an African-American, was thrilled to see Obama elected, but would NEVER have voted for Alan Keyes, Clarence Thomas, Larry Elder, or any number of blacks who I disagree with on the issues.
Most blacks, and the vast majority of women for that matter, are not so tunnel-vision determined to see a member of their group in power that they don't care what the candidate thinks. Not at all. Which is part of the reason Sarah Palin had such low support among women, and much higher support among men.
When I read this blog, I see support for Hillary Clinton often being transferred to Sarah Palin. That's two people who have ONLY gender in common. I wonder if you'd be just as happy to see Phyllis Schlafly, Michelle Malkin, and Barbara Boxer appointed to the same cabinet. They'd all apparently be lauded here, because they'd go into the right hand column on your 52%-of-the government-or-bust-chart.
I respectfully submit that you have allowed the understandable pain and disappointment of Hillary's loss to narrow and warp your focus in a counterproductive way. That's my opinion. I'm sure it will probably unleash a flood of ire and name calling.
I support the ERA. I support Equal Pay For Women. I support Reproductive Freedom for women. I support women's rights.
But I don't support the approach your organization is currently taking. Your blogs drip with Obama bashing, and quota-centric demands, with little regard for anything else.
You are intelligent, passionate, and dedicated. You can do better.
DL Scott
____________________________
Here was Amy Siskinds response:
DL,
After all the cabinet positions are named, then it will be too late to speak out - that is the point.
Perhaps this is not the organization for you? No organization can possibly hope to make every American citizen happy. Perhaps for the type of thing you are looking for you should consider NOW, The White House Project or Emily's List - these organizations seem much more content to accept the status quo and take what they can get from President-elect Obama. That is NOT what The New Agenda is about.
It was nice having you at our site. When you return from your break, I think we would prefer that you take your energies elsewhere.
_____________
She then proceeded to block me from leaving comments on her blog. This was the first comment I had ever made there. I've since discovered that she intercepts and deletes all comments that aren't wildly positive "atta-girls!"
I think that probably says more than I ever could about Ms. Siskind and The New Agenda.
Shrill, close-minded rage seems to be her reaction to anyone who doesn't agree with her one-hundred percent. Dialogue is impossible. Disagreement on any point makes you an enemy.
No doubt her's will remain a tiny fringe movement because she behaves in a hysterical fringe way while trying to give the appearance of calm reasonableness. A person afraid to engage others in a respectful discussion of ideas, and intolerant of being intellectually challenged, is not to be taken seriously.
DL Scott
Thank you, Amy. I've been waiting to read something like this.
Great job.
D.L.----yours is quite a rant as well. The New Agenda has little to do with Obama bashing and everything to do with women's rights, gender parity, and filling a gaping hole in the women's rights movement.
You are among many who were so enamored with Obama that you completely missed the raging misogyny of this campaign season. I honestly don't understand why your type of Obama supporter ended up being so myopic about sexism. It has been a sad day for many men and women to watch our beloved Democratic Party become worse in the sexism department than the Republicans have ever been.
Maybe you can explain why, since you brought up the Obama obsession, you and so many normally sympathetic people simply closed your eyes and said that the sexism didn't exist and doesn't exist. Since you purport to speak for most African-Americans and most women, please explain.
I for one will probably never get over what you and so many others did in being so silently complicit in allowing it to happen. And no, we are far from a fringe group. If you need to think of it that way, it's your problem. Another close-eyed avoidance of reality.
So they were singled out not because they were whistleblowers but because they were female whistleblowers? All those male whistleblowers out there must be living the good life.
The sexism we face today is under the radar - it is not men saying 'no girls allowed' - but it is the keeping women out by still having networking on the golf course and not inviting the female associate. It is shutting the woman down, saying (and believing) she is hysterical, not as rational as her male counterparts. Not even realizing that we spin and judge with a gender lens.
The problem is the pervasive beliefs that men and women are different. Racism has been countered over the years by showing that we are equals, that there is nothing that makes one race smarter or more capable just because of their race. People don't believe that about men and women. We are told girls are more verbal, boys are math or science. We reinforce girls to be sweet and boys to be aggressive and competitive...
And, yes, these are generalities, but isn't that the problem? That because people embrace generalities about gender, women are left either fitting a sweet, nurturing template or are shunned for not fitting into it. We are diverse, just as men are, and need to accept it and be accepted for it.
Women shouldn't have to choose - value should be placed on nurturing fields (like nursing and education) that have been designated 'women's work' - and women contributing to Wall Street and male dominated areas should also be valued for their contributions.
Right now, aren't more women graduating from higher ed and graduate degrees? It will bring change.
Women shouldn't be shunned for being strong in their fields, but they also should be held accountable when they act badly or when they act just as morally reprehensible as the men that were closing them out.
I am just asking for equality. In someday terms. By starting a dialog, that faded when Hillary was out, but needs to be had.
Because it is so accepted we are different, we have never really discussed as a culture the effects of prejudice, and whether or not it is really an acceptable bias.
To DL Scott-
Your post does appear to reveal a disturbing resistance to dialogue on the part of Ms. Siskind. Unless you shrewdly edited it, I found nothing in your commentary inflammatory or dogmatic in quality. It read as reasonable points reasonably offered. And unless you're some serial blog-stalker who was guilty of writing relentlessly to New Agenda insisting that yours is the only point of view, I don't understand her dismissive "un-invite" to you. (And wasn't it helpful of her to suggest that you might be a better fit with NOW--because "they're more content to accept the status quo and accept what they get from President-elect Obama. Ouch!) To be fair to her though, maybe it's because women haven't been treated reasonably for so much of history that she's tired of being bloody reasonable.
I asked about this DL Scott. Apparently, he was attacking the other members on the site. Apparently, he is a "stalker" of sorts. Rather disturbing. Apparently, he has been asked to leave several websites. Just what I heard. I looked at old posts by Ms. Siskind.He seems to be on all of them. Obsessed?
Anyways, great article Ms. Siskind. Thank you for speaking out for the women of this country once again.
Larry Summers fired Derivatives whistleblower at Harvard Management Co. (HMC)
Harvard alum Iris Mack, MBA/PhD requested a meeting with Larry Summers to express her concerns about how her HMC boss Jeff Larson used derivatives to manage an HMC portfolio. Larson eventually left HMC to start Sowood hedge fund with hundreds of millions of dollars of Harvard alums' donations. Sowood was one of the first hedge funds to blow up during the subprime mortgage derivatives crisis.
Dr. Mack communicated with Summers' office regarding such derviatives trades. Perhaps, she could have saved Harvard alums hundreds of millions of dollars if Summers had bothered to continue to hear her out before forcing her resignation. There is a wealth of information describing this derivatives whistleblowing case: correspondence between Dr. Mack and Summer's office (emails, faxes, snail mail, phone records, etc.); legal documents; reports from FBI and DOJ interviews, etc.
Given all this, you have to wonder whether Summers was either too
(a) corrupt and wanted to coverup up something(s) at HMC.
(b) arrogant to think that Dr. Mack had anything of value to tell him about mathematical finance and derivatives. Please recall Summers' comments about women and math. Also, please note that Dr. Mack has a doctorate in Applied Mathematics from Harvard and a Sloan Fellows MBA from London Business School.
(c) incompetent to understand what Dr. Mack was trying to warn him about regarding derivatives trades in HMC portfolios.
Did Summers try to silence Dr. Mack the way he, Rubin and Greenspan tried to silence Attorney Brooksley Born of the CFTC?
To Spinozareader,
No editing involved. You can go to her blog and see exactly what I cut and pasted, unless she's yanked that down too. And that was my FIRST time posting to her site. If you look at the comments section of her blog, you'll see only positive and supportive comments, and no discussion.
In fact, you'll see that another poster thanked me for my thoughtful post, and though she disagreed with me, wanted to continue a dialog. But we couldn't because Amy Siskind threw me off. I tried to leave a post telling the other poster that I was sorry we wouldn't be able to continue our dialog, and even that was immediately erased. I've never been to a blog where no discussion, however civil, is allowed. The only reason I'm even posting the exchange here is that it made me so angry she wouldn't even let me leave a message for the other poster. I thought that was incredibly classless.
To Cruccia,
I don't think it was a rant at all. But others can read it and decide for themselves.
Where do I say there was no sexism in the campaign? You had the first black candidate with a chance to win and the first female candidate with a chance to win. There was inevitably sexism and racism all through the campaign. But neither of the candidates was responsible for what the other had to face. Obama is not the reason that so many people in this country are sexist, and I don't think he's a sexist. Hillary is not the reason there is racism in this country, and I don't think she's racist. There were some things she said during the heat of the campaign, like that Obama couldn't get working class WHITE votes (which he did) and a few other things I don't want to dwell on. It was politics, it was looking for an advantage any way she could, and I don't think any of it was so overt that I'd hang on to anger at her about it.
I'd just say that healing the wounds of this primary season is difficult because you had two candidates, close in ideology, who represented the hopes and aspirations of two historically shut-out groups. That made it very emotional and personal for both sides.
So I understand the resentment. But I also think that many of the people at The New Agenda are among the people holding onto this non-constructive negativity for the longest.
BOTH candidates threw insults back and forth at each other during the primaries. This is politics and that was a hard fought campaign. Candidates demean their opponents, overtly and subtly. That's what they do to try to win. Both candidates made subtle, sometimes questionable, use of identity politics.
But I don't think either campaign crossed the line in any ways so bad that it couldn't be dropped as soon as the competition was over. Hillary Clinton did drop it, proving that she's a true patriot who puts issues above herself.
I was thrilled that Obama showed his maturity by picking her for Sec of State. I think these are two great people who I am glad are working together to pull our country out of the fire.
As for my statement that they are fringe. Nearly 90% of the voters who voted for Hillary ended up voting for Obama. Of the other 10%, half were probably Republican leaning women who just went home once she was out. The people who I think are fringe are the tiny percent of progressive-leaners who were so resentful of not winning that they threw away their values to vote against Obama out of spite, and are still waging war against him. Those "PUMAS" ended up being a tiny fringe group, which is why Obama won the election big.
Ms. Siskind,
Your piece oddly fails to name any prominent men who predicted the crisis far in advance, even though their ranks are numerous.
May I offer Warren Buffett? Perhaps you didn't know that back in 2002 he warned his Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that derivatives are, and I quote, "financial weapons of mass destruction." He is now lauded for that foresight, not because he is male, but because he had was on top his game in the very same way that Born and Bair were as well.
We now know that the number of clear-headed people (both male and female) whose credible warnings were ignored years ago is pretty darn sizable. We can all admit that sexism is a routine and common problem but the REAL problem for this financial crisis was how rampant greed ran roughsod over wisely prudent skepticism, regardless of the gender of the person who spoke it. I'm quite sure that at least one woman's doubts were swept aside with the typical "she's just a girl" thought, but when nationally-prominent men of like mind were equally ignored years ago then it wasn't just sexism.
When a widespread culture of irrational greed forms, it stampedes right over the top of wiser heads even as it plunges itself over the cliff. That's not sexism. It's just downright stupid money-grubbing.
Raw greed trumps gender politics every single time. Men and women alike will be dismissed out of hand when the horde thinks there's a quick and easy buck to be made. That's what you need to get a grip on here.
Flickdog----Are you D.L.? Obama "mature?" Hillary "a true patriot?" Let's get this right. As you stated in your comments, they are both politicians and thus they both made very political decisions. You must be very young to be using that word "mature" as a compliment. Although I'm happy that Hillary is our Secretary of State, I'm not putting either of these people on a pedestal. You need to get over your hero-worship.
Your observations about racism and sexism are on point, but the reality is that sexism and misogyny were revealed to be a very accepted part of our culture, and even you have to admit that that is wrong. Do we want our culture to always accept that? What message is that giving to future generations?
The fight against sexsim is a very tough fight and you have to give The New Agenda credit for being willing to fight it when others haven't. You obviously cannot imagine how it feels to 1) have a whole lifetime fighting sexism and realizing that we are still back in the dark ages as revealed by this election season or 2) to wake up and see it for the first time. The people at The New Agenda are bold brave women and men who have launched what is hoped to be a final assault on the endemic sexism here and everywhere. We in the United States can be a leader here or we can be a loser. At the moment, we are looking like big losers in the sexism department.
Again, this is hardly a fringe group. This group has gotten way past the election. You need to do it too. It has little to do about Obama and everything to do about what kind of country we want. By marginalizing the ONLY group out there fighting this fight on the front lines, you are complicit in the sexism. This group is NOT PUMA. It's a group of people from all over the political spectrum coming together to right an enormous wrong. Stop criticizing its existence, get off your high horse. You're sounding like a sore winner. Use your intelligence in a constructive way and join us. Or be complicit in the sexism. Your choice.
If a citizen believes that women have equal learning and leadership capabilities then you have to conclude that in our society ½ of the leadership capability is in the female population. The resistance to parity in leadership roles must either be based on a belief that women do not have equal learning and leadership capabilities or a willingness to forgo the benefits of effective leadership in order to maintain a social structure that the citizen values. By my definition, each of these qualifies as being sexist.
Although well intentioned this story is a classic example of selection bias - there were many people (men and women) who raised red flags about the derivatives market and deregulation. By cherry picking two prominent females from that pool and implying gender bias the author demonstrates her lack of skill in statistics.
There is no doubt that sexism exists in the world but by trying to paint these two ladies as the (lone) voices of reason the author weakens her own credibility. The men who ignored these prescient women no doubt ignored many men too, for the simple reason that as long as the gravy train was chugging along, not many people wanted to get off it.
Hopefully more journalists will take up basic statistics courses and stop sensationalizing topics by indulging in narrative fallacies.
Sexism is biologically based. A person who considers him/her-self to be intelligent, throughtful, and well-informed is required to examine his/her reactions to determine if indeed he or she has risen beyond biology to look at the very qualities he or she values in him/her self in another person. Regardless of gender, color, body-fat, attractiveness, sexual orientation, or any of the other myriad things about a person which are determined largely by genetic roulette, it is the intelligence, the honor and the personal integrity a person exhbits that qualifies him or her for leadership. Anything else is just -ist by another name.
Although I do not doubt that there is sexism in the workplace and can have disastrous results, I'm feel this story lacks the context of the whole situation that occurred with the economic collapse. I'm sure there were many men also that sounded the alarms and were ignored as well, so why are these two women particularly important? I feel if you can put the story in proper perspective, you'll make a much better case.
Theres no proof to substantiate your premise for this article. There were people before/around the same time that predicted the mess that we are in today, both men and women. While I agree that gender was a factor when the "boys club" ignored the warning calls of Brooksley Born and Sheila Bair, to say that this current economic disaster and/or situations you called out could have been averted if "we would just listen to women" so blatently falls in to feminist stupidity. Its like saying "the world would be perfect if everyone just listened to there mothers".
Thanks again, Amy. Good stats, although I sometimes wish you'd just let the stats speak for themselves. You want men to perk up at these numbers and patterns and as soon as you wrap it up with a sexism battlecry, men get alienated quickly. Don't get me wrong, I agree with your analysis, just offering a suggestion to let it settle with the facts. I frequently work with men-only grouops to directly combat sexism and this non-judgemental, factual approach is really effective.
P.S. Has the Daily Beast noticed also that D.L Scott posts the same rehashing of his New Agenda comment experience on every article Siskind writes? Mr. (or Ms.) Scott, if you're trying to discredit the article by discrediting Siskind, keep your whining fresh and original for the rest of us okay?
Thank you.
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