INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type ofcomputer printer. The quality ofthis reproduction is dependent upon the quality ofthe copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back ofthe book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313n61-4700 800/521-0600 WALL STREET: SYMBOL OF AMERICAN CULTURE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICAN STUDIES MAY 1996 By Michael Peter Gagne Dissertation Committee: Floyd Matson, Chair David Bertelson Paul Hooper Seymour Lutzky Richard Rapson UKI Number: 9629825 Copyright 1996 by Gagne, Michael Peter All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9629825 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This undertaking received important and constructive input from all dissertation committee members. In particular, Dr. Floyd Matson contributed in bringing unity among diverse concepts and Dr. David Bertelson provided the technical advice and close supervision which led to innumerable improvements. I remain in awe of their skill and knowledge and most appreciative of their patience and understanding. Collectively the committee provided a vigorious and memorable learning experience. iii ABSTRACT This work explores an uncharted area of American life, namely, Wall Street as a cultural symbol. It seeks to understand in an interdisciplinary way the historical process by which Wall Street has become increasingly influential in people's lives by representing culturally powerful and appealing ideas and concepts. It explores the action potential of Wall Street language, images, and sYmbols and the ideological units of meaning within them. The thesis argued is that Wall Street has become an increasingly powerful and pervasive sYmbol of American culture that represents a broadly accepted capitalist theology of ambiguous values, ritualistic practices, unique language and the growing commodification and insulation of people's lives. While the Street is real enough, principally it exists in people's minds and the ways they lead their lives. Its professional activity is immersed in numbers, mechanization, and technology, but it lends itself not so much to quantification as to the embodiment of certain American beliefs, values, and experiences. Wall Street is persuasive in representing a set of deeply held American values and beliefs that have overpowered other American sYmbols that historically represented the interests of the greater commonweal. The preponderance of evidence suggests that it exists in American society as a moral "middle ground, II one where iv fear, narcissism, and greed are as viable as hope, community and charity. It is a counter-weight to idealism and a monument to a shifting sense of what is right and wrong. As America moves into the 21st century, Wall Street's influence is examined in light of the nation's future prospects. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iii Abstract i v List of Tables vii Chapter 1: The Opening Bell 1 Chapter 2: Investing in Our Past 18 Chapter 3: Betting on the Nature of America's Self-Made Man 42 Chapter 4: Ticker-Tape in the Garden 90 A Symbol Emerges 90 Bullish on the American Dream 125 Chapter 5: The Language Brokers 144 Shaping a Preferred Discourse 144 The Dividends of Obfuscation 170 Chapter 6: In Stocks We Trust 185 Haven in a Leveraged World 185 Playing the Game 196 Greed is Good 219 Chapter 7: The Commodification of American CUlture 234 Wall Street to Main Street 234 Long Arm of the Deal 247 Chapter 8: Masters of the Universe 283 Cowboy Capitalists and the New Frontier 283 Accessing the Conduits of Power 312 Chapter 9: America at the Closing Bell 319 Exploring our Transformation 322 Speculating on Futures 351 Bibliography 371 vi LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Alienation Index 240 vii CHAPTER 1 THE OPENING BELL "Money, and not morality, is the principle of commercial nations." Thomas Jefferson' When Thomas Jefferson wrote these words to John Langdon in 1810, Wall Street was already a prominent place on the American landscape. George Washington was inaugu- rated there as the first President of the United States. Alexander Hamilton lived and worked on the Street, and while there greatly influenced the future development of America's business, banking, and trading communities. At the very birth of our nation, Wall Street was already a locus of power and influence in the United States of America, and that was just the beginning. Today, Wall Street transcends the limits of mere "place" and "commercial center." It is much more than the world's trading and financial centerpiece, as if that were not enough. It is more than the center of finance capital- ism and the seat of the New York Stock Exchange. Arguably, it is at the heart of the American economic system and at the core of the international free-market system. For purely economic and financial reasons, Wall Street has been critically acclaimed as liThe Greatest Square Mile on Earth II .2 And still, it is even more to the American people and to their culture. 1 To begin with, Wall Street exists most importantly not as a "place" but a cultural sYmbol. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines "sYmbol" as " ...a thing regarded by general consent as naturally typifying or representing or recalling something by possession of analogous qualities or by association in fact or thought. ,,3 Wall Street is an abstraction, a sYmbol that has become increasingly powerful and persuasive in representing both a set of deeply held values and the increasing commodification of our own culture to include the arts, entertainment, language, sports, and much more. It is a symbol whose very founda- tion is laid in our cultural heritage. So, while the Street is real enough, principally it exists in people's minds and in the tangible expression of their lives. One process by which symbols like Wall Street acquire meaning is through the accumulation of sensory impressions. This important process is briefly described by Suzanne K. Langer in "Signs and SYmbols": All our sense impressions leave their traces in our memory as sYmbols, images representing our ideas of things; and the tendency to manipulate ideas, to combine and abstract, mix and extend them by playing with symbols, is man's outstand­ ing characteristic. It seems to be what his brain most naturally, and spontaneously does. Therefore his primitive mental function is not judging reality, but dreaming his desires. 4 Wall Street increasingly floods our senses with stimuli that give rise to our dreams and desires--early retirement, 2 college expenses paid for the children, security from want or denial of "self" and escape. Wall Street is quite unlike other prominent American symbols like the Statue of Liberty or the Lincoln Memorial. In the American pantheon of symbols, it is unique in that it is not invested with any particular dignity, with character and purpose beyond reproach, with lofty idealism, or with virtue that places the United States on some higher moral ground. Wall Street makes no such pretense. The preponderance of evidence suggests that it exists in our culture as a moral "middle ground," one where fear, narcissism and greed are as viable as hope, community and charity. It is a counter-weight to our idealism and a monument to our shifting sense of what is right and wrong. Wall Street has also become the institution of choice for millions of Americans and the daily barometer of our national well being. It casts a very large shadow over our daily experience by successfully accessing and saturating media and other conduits of power and influence. Wall Street offers insulation against many of the harsh reali­ ties which surround us like homelessness and street-crime and provides the means of individual escape. As we approach the turn of the century, there is one super­ highway to achieving material success and personal freedom from fear and want and that is Wall Street. The toll to be 3 paid is assent, directly or indirectly, to its agenda and incursion into our daily lives. If, as anthropologist Ruth Benedict has argued, culture actuates the behavior of individuals,s then there is indeed an intimate and complex relationship between the culture symbolized by Wall Street and the behavior of the American people. There are necessarily many themes to explore in this intricate web. Americans are moved economically, socially, and psychologically by what takes place on Wall Street and by what it represents. The Street tightens its grasp on America by issuing a daily torrent of cultural stimuli to include a unique language, rituals of winning and losing, larger-than-life characters in both fiction and non-fiction, film portrayals, news bytes, television and radio programs, satellite telecommunication links, electronic data, newsletters, portfolios, prospecti and advertisements.