Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

Wall Street liberal? They're like the least political entity, caring only about money...

From another WSJ article - https://www.wsj.com/articles/glorifi-how-new-anti-woke-bank-...

"GloriFi defined itself in contrast to many big, established banks, including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc., which have in recent years pledged to consider environmental, social and governance, or ESG, principles in their businesses. Some lenders have cut ties with some corporate clients in the gun, coal and private prison industries."

Seems like those decisions were more business based and they simply took advantage of some nice PR, since the "anti-woke" bank obviously didn't make money.

It does seem like they've confused Hollywood with Wall Street. I mean, had the founders ever met a WS trader, for example? Okay, maybe not, plenty of people haven't. But there are magazines targeted to traders (I used to subscribe to one), someone could go read one of those. Not a lot of herbal bath bombs being advertised (or whatever the conservative fantasy would be of a "liberal" advertisement). Nope, fast cars, expensive liquor, and other items of the hedonistic lifestyle. I don't know which bucket "hedonism" falls into, but I doubt it's "woke".

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree on what the founders were thinking, but I'm still stumped on how they consider Wall Street to be liberal, and why their offered alternative had better features because "not woke".

Nah, read about Glorifi and their position in relation to ESG. The powers that be got very upset when they perceived funds' ESG rules to be pressuring companies to make what they saw as "woke" changes to the structure and governance of companies.

Just another group of culture warriors biting the dust.

Thanks, your comment gave me the TLA to go look for. Doesn’t make it look any better for Glorifi, but I now have a little better understanding of what they mean.

I'm fairly sure the entire point was to market to the segement of the population that pins their identity on hating "wokeness", "liberals" and "the east coast elites", and doesn't do much intellectual examinations of those sentiments.

> They're like the least political entity, caring only about money...

"caring only about money" is absolutely a political ideology. Although I agree that it's weird to label this as liberal, as it's an ideology that's usually closely aligned with conservatism.

I'd say "caring only about money" is the complete absence of ideology since it just chases personal benefits. Just operating on basic instincts using more sophisticated mental skills. There are some who claim that they engage in such behavior because profit-maximization is for the moral good or whatever, but I wouldn't make that as the default assumption.

As for the "weirdness" you refer to, the company was arguing that banks indeed do not care only about money, but impose costly political agendas too. Hence the supposed value proposition.

> I'd say "caring only about money" is the complete absence of ideology since it just chases personal benefits.

Chasing personal benefits is also an ideology! One in opposition to the ideology that suggests we ought to work for benefit of others as well as ourselves. As is the idea that people's "basic instincts" are to chase personal benefits is too. If you don't believe me, try hanging out with a small child (under 4) and see how selfless and generous they are.

You're giving an example of a child not motivated by ideology to prove everything is an ideology? Or is the example to show that everything can be instinctive too? If so how can you argue with certainty that anything is ideology?

What if the banker considers those choices made in financial self-interest to be against their own personal ideals (of being selfless etc) but did it anyway?

It obviously cares about money, but it's definitely been leaning liberal for the past ten years. It started when Blankfein came out in support of gay marriage right after OWS. Blackrock with the ESG push.

> caring only about money

Seems to me this would make them the _most_ political entity.

Modern American right-wing politics has a major underlying grievance narrative: they’re ordinary people, a silent majority, who are being oppressed by the all-powerful Liberal Establishment and that will be the official message even if it’s something like a clear terms of service violation.

This is like catnip for a certain type of salesman hoping that they can try to get you to see their product as a way of asserting your identity while getting you to discount criticism. The WSJ has a certain editorial position but their financial reporters tend not to pull punches, and that’s not what you want if you’re not really better at anything but posturing.

Money is the basis of a ton of politics. See the different perspectives from socialists and capitalists.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com