Summary of Karen Ho's Liquidated

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I first became interested in studying Wall Street in September 1995, when I heard about the massive downsizing of ATT employees. The stock prices of Wall Street investment banks also rose as a result.

#2 The past three decades have seen a shift in the cultural code of business, which is reflected in the corporate landscape and the relationships among layoffs, corporate profits, and stock prices. In this period, which includes the so-called greatest economic boom in American history, the economy has experienced record corporate profits and a long rising stock market, while job insecurity has spiked.

#3 The primary mission of American corporations is to increase their stock prices for the benefit of their true owners, the shareholders. Employees are no longer benefited when the corporation makes a profit, because they are considered outside the corporation’s central purpose.

#4 The ostensible dominance of finance capital has led to a celebration of the stock market and Wall Street financial norms. But how do investment bankers make markets. And how have the severe social dislocations usually attributed to global capitalism been actualized in the form of record corporate profits and soaring stock prices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822509429

IRB Media

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Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I first became interested in studying Wall Street in September 1995, when I heard about the massive downsizing of ATT employees. The stock prices of Wall Street investment banks also rose as a result.

#2

The past three decades have seen a shift in the cultural code of business, which is reflected in the corporate landscape and the relationships among layoffs, corporate profits, and stock prices. In this period, which includes the so-called greatest economic boom in American history, the economy has experienced record corporate profits and a long rising stock market, while job insecurity has spiked.

#3

The primary mission of American corporations is to increase their stock prices for the benefit of their true owners, the shareholders. Employees are no longer benefited when the corporation makes a profit, because they are considered outside the corporation’s central purpose.

#4

The ostensible dominance of finance capital has led to a celebration of the stock market and Wall Street financial norms. But how do investment bankers make markets. And how have the severe social dislocations usually attributed to global capitalism been actualized in the form of record corporate profits and soaring stock prices.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Wall Street is the central hub of financial institutions and actor-networks that embody a particular financial ethos and set of practices. I focused on the functions of corporate finance and MA within the banks, as they demonstrate the interconnections between financial and productive markets.

#2

The financial culture that I broadly denote by the term Wall Street investment banks does not always map neatly onto particular institutions. I use the designation to broadly signify an ethos and set of practices that continue to be deeply embedded in the intricate network of institutions, investments, and people we call high finance.

#3

The Wall Street culture is indicative of its disappearing acts. Wall Street has been changing its identities and locations constantly, and the millennial crash and record downsizings are a result of this.

#4

The influence and success of Wall Street has generated not only record profits but also volatility, crisis, and a continual existence on the brink of annihilation. Wall Street’s self-annihilation has not so much led to the disappearance of its particular cultural practices or power over American business as it has to constant financial crisis and widening socioeconomic inequality.

#5

The demise of my field site, Wall Street investment banking, in 2008 was not a radical turn of events, but the fairly predictable outcome of a peculiar corporate culture. I examine the structure and formation of investment bankers’ habitus, how they have developed an investment banking ethos that frames and empowers them to impose regimes of restructuring and deal making onto corporate America.

#6

Wall Street investment bankers understand the necessity of constantly performing in insecure work environments not as a liability, but as a challenge. They are trained to view themselves as the best and the brightest, and their lack of employment security serves as a test of their smartness.

#7

However, it is not my intention to assert that the Wall Street financial community, a heterogeneous site itself, single-handedly caused these massive corporate transformations.

Insights from Chapter 3

#1

I used my socioeconomic background and connections with elite universities to break through the barriers of security and public relations. I was first introduced to investment banking as a career option while an undergraduate at Stanford University.

#2

I got a job at a Wall Street investment bank, a strategy with sociological precedent, while still following anthropological ethical norms. I participated in the spring career services recruitment process at Princeton in 1996. I was hired by Bankers Trust New York Corporation, a hybrid investment and commercial bank, as an internal management consultant analyst.

#3

I lived in a two-bedroom apartment share in the Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, which allowed me to pay lower rent than at Princeton. I was