The Opposition…

Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits

Kevin Roose

Discussion: 2014-Jan-Feb-Mar

Why we're reading this: February 27, 2014
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2014-Jan-Feb-Mar

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* March 2014
By Tiffany , WristStrong · 1 post · 21 views

last updated Apr 02, 2014 01:05PM

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What Members Thought

Feb 28, 2014 Becky rated it it was amazing

Young Money is an engaging and thought provoking read, humanizing individuals far from the golden parachutes and mind-boggling power plays of the financial industry elite. Roose explores how lost college students become our favorite modern social villain, the Wall Street executive.

Roose profiles a family meal ticket and a first generation American, the try-hards and the children of privilege. He tells of Occupation sympathizers and Wall Street apologists. He follows those mentally and physically Young Money is an engaging and thought provoking read, humanizing individuals far from the golden parachutes and mind-boggling power plays of the financial industry elite. Roose explores how lost college students become our favorite modern social villain, the Wall Street executive.

Roose profiles a family meal ticket and a first generation American, the try-hards and the children of privilege. He tells of Occupation sympathizers and Wall Street apologists. He follows those mentally and physically destroyed by a machine designed to create absolute loyalty and dependence on The Bank while also profiling those who thrive. There are those who can’t fathom ever being happy while working on Wall Street and those who can’t imagine being anywhere else.

This is the story of young 20-somethings doing what they have always done. They are figuring out who they are and what they stand for and which sort of life is worth fighting for. They were raised on a diet of praise and encouragement but no specifics as to what was expected beyond to succeed. The road to finance is much more accidental than you might expect, much like the one often followed into teaching or engineering or construction work. While there is a subset of each group that entered the field with passion, drive, and specific aspirations, there is a larger group that is simply trying to survive until they grow up a little more and can do what they dream or at least know what that dream might be.

Roose examines if change can really come in an industry both defining and defined by the status quo. He looks at what happens when young people are expected to come to moral maturity in a bubble of an inherently amoral industry.

Most telling is perhaps this quote from Chelsea:

“To her, the great tragedy of Wall Street wasn’t that it was evil and greedy, but that it was fundamentally boring, a place populated by the kinds of uncurious corporate drones who had no lives outside of work, who watched CNBC out of personal interest and considered Berkshire Hathaways’s annual investor letter the ne plus ultra of high literature. It was those people- and not insider-trading felons, book-cooking CEOs, or sneering plutocrats- who made her want to run screaming from the finance world.”

Then there is Derrick who says:

“People in provate equity are smarter than you average person, but they’re not that much smarter. And as long as the system is structured like this… it’s not going to change.”

He goes on to say:

“Of course, I say all this knowing that the fucked-up system is how I have an apartment I don’t worry about the rent for, how I take cabs everywhere…”

Finally, he asks Roose about charitable organizations he might join. Derrick is the embodiment of one of the key questions of the book. Can you find a balance between an amoral job and an ethically lived life? Can money buy happiness or does it just make misery more palatable?
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