The news this week is deeply ironic: the main building of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street will be engraved with the name of Stephen A. Schwarzman, while the periodicals inside may sadly chronicle Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York state, as Client Number 9 of a prostitution ring. Both men made their name on Wall Street: Schwarzman rose from his first job in investment banking at Lehman Brothers to run the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, that has allowed him to stash away an estimated $4 billion today, while Spitzer got corporations from Samsung to investment bankers like Lehman Brothers to return almost the same amount to the public trust.
The Wall Street financier is now giving $100 million to support a worthy cause that taxpayers cannot afford: a new library to lend books, wireless Internet access and new rooms for children and teenagers, to attract as many as three million new users, most of whom are expected to be from low-income minority groups. It will be financed by the profits that Schwarzman made at Blackstone by exploiting tax loopholes to cut his tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, costing the U.S. taxpayer tens of millions of dollars.Doubtless one of the books that will be available at the new library will be the play Julius Ceasar, where Mark Anthony is quoted as saying: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” Yet Schwarzman, like many wealthy people before him, will be able to escape the curse of history, by buying fame at a public auction.
Spitzer may not escape the curse. The name “Mr. Clean” may never be applied to him again. But for those of us that track corporate fraud, who can forget his shining moments?
For example, in 2002 when ten Wall Street banks from Bear Sterns to UBS Warburg were forced to pay $1.4 billion to settle charges of “spinning” stock prices to make millions for wealthy investors? Or in 2003, when his office uncovered how mutual fund brokers allowed select clients privileges deprived to ordinary customers? Another billion dollars was paid back to the small investor. How about the $50 million in royalties that his office discovered that record companies hid from musicians in a 2004 investigation? And let’s not forget the $730 million in fines paid out in 2006 when his office discovered price-fixing among computer chip manufacturers.
When Spitzer offered his apologies for his private folly, he asked that the media remember that politics should not be about individuals but about ideas and the public good. That surely is also the role of libraries — ideas and the public good — not about celebrating the titans of greed and excess. Perhaps if Wall Street were to pay its fair share of tax dollars to spend on libraries, then there would be no need to name the Central Library after one of the men who robbed the public purse.
Will children who pass through those two stone lions to enter the library notice that their names are Patience and Fortitude? Or will they hope that one day they become as rich and famous as the man after whom the building is named?
I hope that when they look through the shelves of the New York public library, they will find books and magazines that remind generations of New Yorkers to come of Eliot Spitzer’s true legacy: of an honest man — human and fallible no doubt — who spoke truth to power.
(And for those on Wall Street who are crowing about Spitzer’s misfortune, shame on you; your turn may be next to lose your job in the reckoning over the real scandal on Wall Street: the sub-prime mortgage crisis that threatens to leave many a poor family without a home of their own.)
Pratap Chatterjee, Program Director and Managing Editor of CorpWatch, is an investigative journalist, producer and author.
So…what’s Schwarzman’s client number? If he has one they could add it to the library name.
As a person who works as a financial advisor from Wall Street in small town america…I am sad that Mr. Spitzer is this stupid. Personally, I think there was more to do with Wall Street firms, even my own company. The dumb things my company does in the name of greed is shameful. But I plug on as I believe my clients deserve a good advisor. I’m as mad at Mr. Spitzer as I was at President Clinton. They take my breath away thinking we are that stupid that they can abuse our trust in them. I agree that anyone on Wall Street who is crowing about Mr. Spitzer fall from grace should be humble by this and maybe stop to think “Are they acting in a way that is harmful to the trust that their employees and clients” put in them.
As I’ve said on other sites, this is not about Eliot Spitzer, sex, prostitutes and money manipulation. It is about our own, individual lives and how we practice our personal and professional values, day to day. Mr. Spitzer apparently(I don’t know him personally and can only guess at his motivations for his deeds, sexual or otherwise) succumbed to the Medusa of Power and may have felt himself invulnerable to his enemies. I can only guess, from my own perspective. What this offers each of us here is another opportunity to examine our own weaknesses and recognize that no one is exempt from the consequences of his/her actions. Client 9 has been identified and he is accepting at least some of his responsibility for he behavior. What of the other Clients who have yet to be named? What are the motivations of those who have called for Spitzer’s resignation or impeachment? What might the unturned stone reveal about them? In a world of speculation, we are left with only our own suppositions, based on little more than our own prejudices and shadow sides of projection.
Forgiveness is an incredibly powerful virtue. It may be time to dispense a little and see what healing may arise. There is a classic line in ancient literature: “Physician, Heal Thyself.” Casting stones from glass houses invites a lot of broken glass. Be careful where you tread.
I am committed to Oneness through Justice and Transformation
peace,
st john
Having known Stephen Schwartzman since he and I attended the same high school in suburban Philadelphia, I am not quite in agreement witrh Pratap Chatterjee’s characterization.
Neither Stephen nor Elliot are all that different from one another. They are no immoral as much as they are amoral. Both sensed their opportunities and took hold of them to the approving nods of the public at large.
That one has been held up for public ridicule before the other doesn’t mean much. As for “buying immortality” by getting your name connected with some institution or on a building, this did not especially help the likes of Richard Nixon, Warren Harding, or Herbert Hoover.
As our coming depression deepens into a disaster with no seeming end or resolution all the money boyz on Wall Street will be seen for what they truly are and treated accordingly.
Quoting from an article by David Walsh entitled, “New York Governor Eliot Spitzer Forced to Resign in Sex Scandal” —
“The real concerns in this episode center on the methods used by the Bush administration’s Justice Department and their implications for the entire political system. What the facts and the context strongly suggest is that Spitzer was targeted by powerful enemies in the government, who act without restraint and on behalf of a definite political agenda.
“With its enormous financial and technological resources, and new-found powers under laws enacted in the name of the bogus “war on terror,” the federal government has the means to “get the goods” on its opponents and either intimidate them into silence, destroy their careers, or have them locked away in prison. Political scores are settled in this manner and prominent figures eliminated in bloodless “hits.”
“How many others are under investigation? What kind of impact will the set-up of Spitzer have on American political life, where those who live “blameless lives” are few and far between? …
“… one needs to ask, at what level did this sting operation receive approval? Was it approved by Attorney General Michael Mukasey? Was George W. Bush involved?
“The affair became the property of the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section, notorious under the Bush administration for its investigation of 5.6 times as many Democrats as Republicans. …
“This is all about politics and the way in which politics is conducted in the US at present. With great fanfare, amid endless claims about the need to protect freedom and democracy, the US government launched the “war on terror,” tightened banking regulations to fight “terrorist financing,” and what has it accomplished? Involving the governor of New York in a sordid sex scandal! …
“The Spitzer affair is terribly American, reflective of a country where social and class issues are not yet fought out openly, but through coded messages, metaphors and scandals. Meanwhile, the working population is disenfranchised and forced to choose between one or another millionaire politician.
The increasing resort to police-state methods to regulate political differences demonstrates that those social and class issues are threatening ever more insistently to burst through to the surface.”
Here’s the entire article by David Walsh — http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/mar2008/sptz-m13.shtml
so painfully clear, he was too dangerous to the ruling class and they had to destroy him
too bad joe six-pack can’t fathom that maybe a govenor’s tenure should depend on the quality of his performance as govenor
unfortunately i can’t see that they’ll allow a democrat win the presidency
welcone to the Titanic and, no, there isn’t a life-boat for you.
if the american people ever were to wake up, i’d think they’d be damn mad