Wall Street Is Dodge City

You probably never thought Wall Street as a frontier town, but that is just what it is in the minds who occupy it. It is the last great place where you can make a fortune without fear of regulation and rules. You can mine for whatever you want and even make up products that never existed before you invented them. It is the last frontier where the sharp guys from the East finally outsmart the cowboys and end up owning the ranch. The Western has been replaced by the Eastern.
No sheriff need apply. As soon as there is any mention of a sheriff, the Wall Street gun-slingers try to stonewall the suggestion, insisting that they have things under control, or if they don’t, the Market (God) will provide the correction necessary to bring justice sooner or later. Trust in the Market, they say.
There is no other money moving institution left on earth that does not have some sort of regulation or accountability imposed on the players. That’s what makes Wall Street the last frontier, the Dodge City of the 21st Century.
For example, even in one of the most rough and tumble worlds in existence, the NFL, the players are not left to merely say “my bad” when they make a mistake such as hitting someone out of bounds or grabbing a face mask. They are penalized by referees who manage the game and impose regulations agreed upon by the owners to protect their investments, keep the game sustainable, and exercise justice.
In the recent Wall Street catastrophe, by contrast, there was not only no accountability for error, there was not even an apology forthcoming from any Wall Street banker, other than from Bernie Madoff after he had been caught with his hand in the biggest cookie jar ever. Deregulation clearly had led to chaos.
We as Americans love Westerns. We love the idea of being able to do whatever we want whenever we want to do it. However, we have generally agreed on rules and constraints in almost every sphere of life except on Wall Street. We may not like the specifics of some rules, but we are not disobeying those rules in large numbers. We tend to be law-abiding citizens. Besides, in most Westerns there is a sheriff who sooner or later exercises justice.
In the traditional Western, the good guys wore the white hats, the bad guys the black with slightly shorter brims, and the nerds wore Eastern clothes with a derby. Occasionally the derby was a bad guy, but most of the time he needed the defense of the white hats against the black. The white hats always won in the end, and the derby was either saved or marginalized.
How is it, then, that we have allowed the American Western narrative to be taken over by the Eastern where the nerdy investment banker “gets the girl”? It is an appalling metamorphosis and probably explains why the second amendment is so popular with the Western-minded “cowboys” who drive their pick-ups to their militia gatherings on weekends. They are trying to hang on to the last vestige of the narrative they were taught to believe but have been emasculated by the Easterner who has made Wall Street the “false” last frontier.
The increase in gun purchase of late has more to do with this transformation in the American narrative than any other single factor. Much has been said about it being the result of the election of a black President. That’s true for some but for most it is a deflection or scape-goat for the resentment of the more invisible or amorphous Wall Street nerd who, like the Wizard of Oz, is hidden from sight, unexposed, and therefore hard to scope as a visible target. Obama’s inaction to date keeps him firmly linked to the Eastern narrative in the minds of many.
Until the government makes clear that it will regulate this last and essentially un-Western frontier, the Western narrative will remain resurrected and just as dangerous in its own way as the Eastern narrative of wild Wall Street as Dodge City.