Someone Has To Take The Blame
Contributed, entirely coincidentally, by Zoe Cruz.
Last week, the co-president of Morgan Stanley and one of the most visible women on Wall Street, Zoe Cruz, was fired. According to Bloomberg.com, Ms. Cruz, who was born in Greece and received undergraduate and MBA degrees from Harvard University, started her Morgan Stanley career in 1982 as a bond trader. She became a managing director in 1990 and helped run foreign exchange before taking charge of fixed income, commodities and foreign exchange in 2000.
Only last year, Zoe Cruz topped the Forbes Magazine list of the 10 most powerful women in the world. Oh, how the mighty fall. So what happened?
Right now all of the major banks, corporations, and investment firms, are playing ‘hot potato’ and trying to pass the blame for the subprime market collapse onto scapegoats at the top in an attempt to halt hemorrhaging losses. Market-wide, credit losses entangled in subprime home loans add up to more than $50 billion, -and that loss continues to weaken the economy in ways both subtle and overt.
But is Cruz really to blame for Morgan Stanley’s slip-up?
As an editor of a blog that has covered this issue, or perhaps because of the strange coincidence that my name is also Zoe Cruz, I received an email that was actually a discussion between two people well-versed in the ups and downs of the financial industry. Their identities are kept confidential to protect the still-gainfully employed.
The email authors discussed how THE Zoe Cruz was unjustly represented in recent Wall Street Journal articles covering her demise. The emails also noted that three weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article stating that Cruz was the heir apparent to John Mack, C.E.O of Morgan Stanley, and now the Journal is publishing articles explaining how Mr. Mack lost confidence in Ms. Cruz.
The other writer also expressed disappointment, saying that Ms. Cruz had held the firm together and that now she was taking the fall for others and being treated as a scapegoat.
We are interested to know what The Glass Hammer readers think about the firing of Zoe Cruz, and whether you all think that the hatchet man on Wall Street is disproportionately targeting the few women at the top. Feel free to weigh in.
