If you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a day trader, someone with a 401k, someone who thinks everyone on Wall Street is a crook, or you just don’t care about the economy, you need to read Transforming Wall Street because there’s so much to do. Maybe you don’t know about capitalism in America today, and there is reason to hope. Yes, there are some shady deals, but author Kim Ann Curtin believes there is also a lot to celebrate, a lot of good people working in the financial world, and a better future for all of us that can be achieved when we reassess capitalism and start living. consciously.
Known as “The Wall Street Coach,” Curtin set out to write this book after a diverse career that included being an operations manager for a bookstore, working as an executive assistant to the CEO of a bankers association, being a personal assistant to a hedge fund manager, and ultimately becoming a personal and executive coach. Early in her coaching career, convinced that capitalism needed a dose of conscious living, Curtin decided to give free training to the people of Wall Street, and so, she tells us, “On October 7, 2008, I went to take my training to those I hoped would be able to use it. After a couple of hours of sitting on my concrete bench at the corner of Broad and Wall Street, there was some static in the air. I could feel the tension. I asked a passerby what was going on. and he said, ‘The market is in free fall.’ Then people started coming up to me, the kind of executives I didn’t expect.”
When the stock market crashed and the Great Recession began, the seeds were planted for Curtin to train capitalists in conscious living, and from there came the idea to write this book. She understood how upset many people were with Wall Street when much unethical behavior and dealing was revealed in the months that followed, but Curtin had also always been a firm believer in capitalism, and she believes that rather than the two opposing concepts , one can make money and still do good in the world. Beyond that, she believes that capitalism remains the best economic answer; she states, “balancing capitalism with conscious living is what can and will transform our economy, Wall Street and the world.”
A great and noble belief, but perhaps easier said than done. Still, Curtin doesn’t delude himself or rely on fancy theories. In Transforming Wall Street, he begins with the basics of capitalism, its foundations, and separates the facts from the myths, shedding new light, or rather revealing what was always there but often overlooked, about Adam’s theories. Smith and Ayn Rand on how capitalism should work and why those beliefs are still valuable and doable today. He includes discussions with professors who are experts in the theory of capitalism and points out what capitalism really is versus how it is often misunderstood and distorted.
Then, convinced that she could find ethical people on Wall Street as role models, Curtin set out to interview the group of people she calls “The Wall Street 50,” though in the end she found more than fifty. These are ethical people who work in the financial sector; some refused to be unethical and left rogue companies on Wall Street, others set up their own ethically guided companies, and others are trying to change the world using capitalism as fuel. Non-profit organizations. Curtin spent hundreds of hours interviewing The Wall Street 50 and excerpts from those interviews are included in the book. Interviewees include John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group, Bill Ackman, founder of Persing Square Capital Management, and Jim Rogers, founder of Beeland Interests. She also interviewed more than a dozen people she refers to as “Masters of Consciousness” to gather their thoughts on ethical living and how capitalism can be compatible with it. These teachers include Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God, Rasanath Das, a former investment banker turned Buddhist monk, and Patricia Aburdene, author of Conscious Money.
The interview sections take up most of the book and are organized by discussion topics, including what Curtin calls the Five Practices for Becoming More Awake: Self-Responsibility, Empathy with Self/Others, Non-Emotional Resistance/Present Moment Awareness, the Inner and Outer Journey, and Self-Awareness/Mindfulness. He also discusses with the Wall Street 50 how they balance being a capitalist with living consciously, what to do when morally tested, what advice they would have for those entering Wall Street, and what they would do to change Wall Street if they had magic wands. .
The result of all this research and interviews is a diversity of views on what Wall Street is and what it can become. Not all the interviewees agree with the others, but that allows for a lot of food for thought and many paths to choose that can lead us in the right direction. Curtin’s purpose is not to offer a “fix” for Wall Street, but rather to open up the conversation, encourage people to rethink the definition of capitalism and how it works, put jaded feelings aside and instead see the possibilities. hope that capitalism offers. . If we all start thinking and living consciously about our own money and how it’s used, I don’t think we can underestimate the positive change that can occur. I welcome how Curtin has pulled back the “curtain” on Wall Street dealings to reveal not just the bad but all the hope there is. Transforming Wall Street is a ray of hope coming through the window of a dusty room, allowing us to rediscover the possibilities of capitalism that were always there.