Paul B. Farrell

July 27, 2010

Wall Street's death wish: Venus vs. Alpha-males

Commentary: Unless women take control of Wall Street and America, 'The End' is near

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, Wall Street has a death wish, secretly trying to self-destruct. Can't stop. Don't get it. Wall Street's culture, mindset, brain, psyche -- whatever you call it -- has a saboteur locked deep in the unconscious. Not only are they hell-bent on self-destruction, they're taking America down with them.

Why? It's a "guy thing." Alpha-males have the power. Worse, their death spiral can't end till Venus conquers Mars and its killer instinct -- until we see a new era where women rule not only Wall Street, but Washington and Corporate America. This is a race against time: Alpha-males versus Venus and the feminine mystique. Guys love games. Are women up to it? To win, they must change the rules of the game.

Skepticism surrounds stocks

Amid a constructive earnings season, investors remain skittish about equity investing, says Barrons.com's Bob O'Brien.

First, the historical context: Why did we nod yes when we read Stephen Gandel's summary of a new Wall Street in Time?

"Of all the causes of the financial crisis, one of the biggest was a power shift on Wall Street that left the traders in charge," and "with a trader, the goal of every minute of every day is to make money ... So if running the economy off the cliff makes you money, you will do it, and you will do it every day of every week."

Traders are the "guy thing" on steroids. Imagine a million little Napoleons. Wall Street's macho ego trip went ballistic after 2008 when they scammed Congress, the Fed and Treasury out of trillions. Then they accelerated to warp speed recently, overpowering Washington, sucking the life out of financial reform with hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of lobbyists.

Alpha-males: little boys, Oedipus complex, testosterone overdose

The Alpha-males running America are textbook examples of the Oedipus complex in action. Men? No, inside they're still little boys who secretly want to win mommy's favor by knocking off big daddy. Basic psychology, except they're overdosing the real world with too much edgy testosterone ... aggressive, arrogant, narcissistic ... bullies on the playground overcompensating for an inferiority complex ... they love games, fights, contests, winning, deals, risks, wars, anything to prove they're king-of-the-hill ... like owning truckloads of money, enough for several lifetimes ... think Liar's Poker, they play for bragging rights, to tell "the guys" how they beat "the other guys" on the playing field ... but psychologically they really are just little boys in big-boy costumes playing "grown-up" ... especially the new breed of Wall Street traders gambling in history's greatest casino, the $700 trillion global shadow banking system for derivatives.

This conclusion needs no esoteric psycho-babble. Anyone who's read "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" is way ahead of little boys inhabiting the brains of Blankfein, Paulson, Summers, Bernanke, Geithner and all the other so-called leaders whose secret, collective deathwish is taking America down with their childish games: Beating daddy, winning mommy's favor. Yes, too much testosterone is killing our world.

In our 'Denial of Death can we 'Escape from Evil'

Yes, Wall Street's in a death spiral that's accelerated rapidly since my investment banking days at Morgan Stanley. My first year I read "The Denial of Death" and "Escape from Evil" by Pulitzer Prize-winning psychologist Ernest Becker. Recently I was drawn back, reread them. They reveal Wall Street's dark secret, their psychological pathology.

How? Becker goes deeper than Wall Street's aggressive, narcissistic and dangerously obsessive inner child. Becker's views expose Wall Street's blind, insatiable death wish ... why it exists ... why they deny it ... why it's growing ... and ultimately why this "guy thing," their out-of-control macho testosterone culture is hell-bent on more than self-destruction ... why Wall Street secretly wants to destroy American capitalism and democracy ... and why, unless Venus conquers Mars ... unless women gain more power on Wall Street, Washington and Corporate America ... unless a new collective Venus triggers a paradigm shift, soon ... Mars, Wall Street, the Alpha-male will continue winning ... and killing capitalism and democracy. Becker's opening paragraph cuts deep:

"The prospect of death ... woefully concentrates the mind ... the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else. It is the mainspring of human activity -- activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man."

Get it? Humans will do anything to avoid death. Hate thinking about death. "The Denial of Death" exposes the sin Wall Street is hiding. Our hatred of death. "Emotional Intelligence" author Daniel Goleman, captured this overpowering human fear in "Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception:" "Thousands of years ago in the ancient epic, the "Mahabharatta," a sage poses a riddle, 'What is the greatest wonder of the world.' The answer: 'That no one, though he sees others dying all around, believes he will die.'"

Achieve immorality: Be a hero, bury your terror of death

The philosopher Sam Keen, author of thought-provoking works as "Fire in the Belly" and "Faces of the Enemy," builds on this eternal truth in his foreword to Becker's book, challenging us to read and deny his message, if we can:

"The world is terrifying ... the basic motivation of human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death. Human beings are naturally anxious because we are ultimately helpless and abandoned in a world where we are fated to die ... the terror of death is so overwhelming we conspire to keep it unconscious ... Every child borrows power from adults and creates a personality by introjecting the qualities of the godlike being. If I am my all-powerful father, I will not die."

So we bury this "terror of death" deep in our minds. Then we cover the grave with heroic ventures, in a world where everyone is playing this same game: "Society provides a second line of defense against our natural impotence by creating a hero system that allows us to believe that we transcend death by participating in something of lasting worth. We achieve ersatz immortality by sacrificing ourselves ... conquer an empire ... build a temple ... write a book ... establish a family ... accumulate a fortune ... further progress and prosperity ... create an information society and a global free market." Why? Because "the main task of human life to become heroic and transcend death."

In the broader context, "The Denial of Death" exposes how "businesses and nations may be driven by unconscious motives that have little to do with their stated goals" where "making a killing in business has less to do with economic need or political reality than with the need for assuring that we have achieved something of lasting worth."

Warning, there are untended consequences: Even "heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world." Why? Because "the root of all humanly caused evil ... is our need to gain self-esteem, deny mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image." In short, the sad irony is that as individuals and as a nation, armed with modern technology, our insatiable hero rituals are actually accelerating us faster toward what we so elaborately try to deny ... our inevitable death.

Our last great hope: Venus rules with powerful new women leaders

"Men are from Mars, Women from Venus" is more than a self-help slogan. When working on an earlier book, "The Millionaire Code," my research revealed a key fact about gender personalities: 75% of men had left-brain characteristics -- logical, rational, math, science, systems, concrete facts, details, objective, ordered, knowledge, strategies, impulsive, authoritative, rules, analytical, practical, pattern-seeking, safety, focused on the past, on today, short-term thinkers, warriors. That's the "guy thing" on steroids, the aggressive, narcissistic Alpha-male, the inner-little boy with an unresolved Oedipus complex.

On the other hand, 75% of women tend to have right-brain characteristics: Intuitive, subjective, meaning, philosophical, feelings, creativity, imagination, images and symbols, possibilities, alternatives, forward-thinking, more aware of the future, with a strong sense of long-term benefits and consequences, the big picture, peacemakers.

But unfortunately, Alpha-males, left-brain thinkers run America, get us into messes, like 2008's meltdown. Legendary money manager, Jeremy Grantham, whose firm manages $106 billion worldwide, said it best in an early 2008 quarterly letter commenting on how America's governmental and banking leaders are "impatient ... management types who focus on what they are doing this quarter or this annual budget."

Grantham warns that long-term leadership "requires more people with a historical perspective who are more thoughtful and more right-brained ... but we end up with an army of left-brained immediate doers. So it's more or less guaranteed that every time we get an outlying, obscure event that has never happened before in history, they are always to miss it." Our leaders have loser-brains.

Yes, America is a nation ruled by Alpha-males with a death wish, yet blind to their fatal self-destructive flaw. The warnings are everywhere, loud. But once again, few will listen. As Grantham put it, "the three or four dozen-odd characters screaming about it are always going to be ignored," much as Greenspan, Paulson, Bernanke and Congress did for many years before the 2008 meltdown. Our Alpha-male leaders always ignore signs of a coming system failure, denying every new, bigger meltdown and collapse ... until it's too late.

Can we dodge our fate? Redirect the "guy thing?" America is ruled by high-testosterone Marsian, Alpha-male little boys motivated by a killer instinct and an Oedipus complex, trapped in a myopic left-brain culture. The only way to avoid America's fate would be a shocking paradigm shift creating a new consciousness that thrusts more right-brain thinkers -- more women -- into leadership roles.

But will it happen in time? Long odds.