The Higher Road for Wall Street

Well, it looks like the chief executives of Wall Street firms are making better choices by withdrawing from the Saudi’s “Davos in the Desert” conference. Instead of bowing to the altar of money, they seem to be listening to the higher values of human rights and concern for mankind. The news and evidences coming out surrounding the death of Khashoggi really point a damning finger against the royals, specifically MBS. MBS might not have known about the circumstances but the logic of the evidence makes it really hard to believe that MBS did not know about it since he appears to have such tight control over the country.

So these chief executives decided to take the higher road rather than fear loss of business or lose potential financial gain. Subscribing to the American values of human rights is a better road to take rather than bowing down to the gods of money.

Have they learned since the days of the Great Recession? Are they deciding that slavish adherence to full on market capitalism is harming society and harming their image? I don’t know. Earlier in the year, Lawrence Fink of BlackRock had announced that his company will start pushing publish companies to manage for social good rather than just seek maximum profit alone. It was not enough to be profit seeking.

Jared Kushner, on the other hand, seems to have no moral compass. Lately, we’ve been hearing about how he paid zero taxes in the last few years and how he might have pushed out tenants in rent controlled units so he could raise rents. Now, we’re hearing that he tried convincing the president to stand by MBS because this will blow over, just like all other imbroglios.

Um, how about the fact that a man was tortured and brutally murdered and then dismembered? What part of human decency and American values did you miss? This news does not reflect well on him.

All in all, this is such an ugly business that the chief executives, including Jamie Dimon and Bill Ford, were right to back out of the conference. There needs to be a full investigation, preferably by a third party, and consequences need to be meted. What consequences? I don’t know. This is the tightrope that everyone will have to traverse, but potential for lots of money should not factor in the decision. That’s just gross.