SHEconomics | 11/10/2008 4:00 am

Introducing SHEconomics, by Liz Peek

By Liz Peek

Editor’s Note: Liz Peek is a financial columnist and the author of wowOwow’s Wall Street Weekly. Liz Peek’s SHEconomics series, herewith, is scheduled to become a book. Click here for Chapter 1 of SHEconomics.

Ladies: this is a call to arms! While we’re all busy blaming Alan Greenspan, President Bush, Ben Bernanke, Wall Street Fat Cats, Eliot Spitzer, Franklin Raines, Dick Fuld, Henry Paulson and the idiot that invented subprime mortgages, maybe we should also blame ourselves. Why? Because nearly half the nation affects to have no interest in finance, and wasn’t paying attention.

That’s right. Most women tune out the moment the conversation turns to investments or business, leading to this priceless moment: Last weekend my husband and I had dinner with three other couples. One of the husbands was a Major Mogul, now retired. As he leaned forward to talk to another Big Wig about the bailout bill he said to me, “I’m so sorry – this must be so boring for you, us talking shop.” Worse, as the eight of us sat around the dinner table, he actually said, “There are four great financial minds around this table – surely we can figure out what we should be doing in the market.” The hostess, who successfully manages a sizeable fund-of-funds, winked at me.

Though I was seriously tempted to box his ears (but instead went to help the hostess in the kitchen), I was somewhat sympathetic. He was only reflecting that most women’s eyes glaze over when words like derivatives and hedge funds pop up. I’ve seen it too! A couple of years ago a group of friends organized a birthday lunch for me. I arrived late, and tried to explain that I was in the midst of a riveting interview, and simply couldn’t bear to break it off. The fellow I was talking to – Bill Browder — ran an activist hedge fund in Moscow. Imagine, a money manager trying to take on the oligarchs! He had lived with bodyguards for more than a decade, but felt that under Putin things were gradually improving. Boy, was he wrong. Two years later when he returned from a trip to London, the Russians would not allow him into the country. He had provoked one too many oligarchs!

My friends were unmoved, even when I added the delicious backstory that Browder’s grandfather started the Communist party in the U.S., that Bill had been bankrolled by mysterious financier Edmond Safra and had gone to Russia a decade earlier with $10 million, but not one word of the language. Cool narrative, I thought, well deserving of an extra 20 minutes. I was honestly shocked to look around at my friends, and to realize that they didn’t share my excitement at all. I began to doubt my DNA.

My friends are not stupid or uneducated; they just don’t have any interest in Wall Street, writ large. The problem is, as we are now seeing, the world of finance is not some far distant planet; it is close to home, impacting nearly every American.

Therefore, I am taking it as a personal challenge to bring women up to speed. Someone, for heaven’s sake, needs to ride herd on these donkeys on Wall Street and in Washington and get business back on track. You can’t weigh in if you don’t know what’s going on.

I am inspired to undertake this adventure by the comments I receive on my articles on wowOwow. Many women are struggling to figure out what to do with their IRAs, they are looking for good stock advice and in some cases they are trying to overrule their husbands, whose investments have soured. Often, though, they lack confidence. My guess is that the Wall Street lingo leaves them feeling inadequate. That’s rubbish.

I am also inspired by a story that ran last week in the Financial Times, and that confirmed my view that if women had been paying closer attention we would not be in this mess. Iceland, which has essentially gone bankrupt, has turned its finances over to two women who have been appointed heads of the country’s two newly nationalized banks. The front-page summary made me laugh. It read “Iceland has turned to two women to rebuild its financial system after the banking empire built by its young, male business-school elite collapsed.” Hey – if they can do it, we can too!

So – here is my plan. Every week I will post a simple and digestible explanation of some financial term. I will demystify hedge funds, ETFs, private equity, activist strategies and so on – and hope to make it fun. Soon there will be no excuse for your husband or son or father to act like you can’t manage your affairs – or his! So pay attention ladies. Let’s get the other half of America tuned up so we can prevent the next disaster.

Click here to read Chapter One: Hedge Funds: Apocalypse Now or the Quickest Route to Carrie Bradshaw’s Wardrobe? by Liz Peek

Read more about: Business, Liz Peek, Money, News, Personal finance, SHEconomics, Wall Street, women

35 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

It’s true that many women seem to think it’s not “classy” to think too much about money, and they are aided and abetted in this attitude by the kind of men that you mentioned above. However, let’s not kid ourselves - women are just as greedy and human as men, and if you think educating us all will result in no more financial debacles ever, I think you’re sadly mistaken.

By Rita@ Goldivas on 11/10/2008 10:11 am

e-mail alert

Rita, you have a good “take” on human nature but….I also want my children and grandchildren to have a better life and I think women almost always try to “preserve the species.” Women really do control the majority of the spending in this country and we need to learn, as women, as much as we can about our resources. It really isn’t that hard and I think that “thinking” about what is good for our kids and grandkids can be what will really intrigue us (females) to learn what and how to handle the money with more responsiblity. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

By Dab-a- do on 11/10/2008 10:39 am

e-mail alert

Dear Rita, From looking at your photo it seems safe to say I have lived some years longer than you and must respectfully disagree. I and many women I have known have helped many family members and others financially and in other ways. I cannot say the same for most men I’ve known. I suggest you take a poll among the men and women you know asking whom they’ve helped and why. You may change your mind. I happen to believe that if women were in charge it would be a better world. Its imperative that women think about money, their financial future and security. As a CPA and auditor for over 30 years I’ve seen the inside of many individual’s and corporation’s financial lives. While there many decent, helpful men out there I found many more women that this could be said about. Patty in the SF Bay Area

By Patty Mitchell on 11/10/2008 8:42 pm

e-mail alert

Rita, You are so right. I have extremely bright friends who don’t want to “get into the finances” and let their husbands handle all of it. And it’s partly because I think they want to spend what they want and not worry too much about it. But several know nothing about life insurance (or the amount), amount of investments for retirement, or college, or anything. What happens when something happens to their husband or even divorce? A lot of the bad decisions made on house buys for instance were made because of the need to “keep up with the Joneses” whether your house was a $1m or $100K. (We are financial advisors and see these examples all the time.)

By Susan Easterday on 11/12/2008 3:45 pm

e-mail alert

I am very interested in money matters, but the insider vocabulary is what makes me glaze over. So bring it on, Liz. I’d like to learn the language better.

By Tinka Parker on 11/10/2008 1:12 pm

e-mail alert

When did the world become such a tragic drama-queen, falling apart at the seams? asks Meg Benedict. More here: Well, it’s been a wild past couple weeks, as we witness the dismantling of our government and financial institution’s spending practices. No joke…it is all coming down in the weeks and months to come. And it has been hanging by a thread for some time now. We must remember…all that is from the Old World Order cannot maintain a hold in the New Earth energy. It is ordained by Universal Law of Justice that what does not support the Whole will collapse. And we can see how this not only adversely affects the well-being of our country, and human consciousness, but it also is directly affecting where we personally are holding old energy of duality within our own being. It poses the question - where have we been engaged in these corrupted practices of greed or envy? How have we embodied these symptomatically? We must ask this question now…for it can no longer remain in the fiber of our being. All decay from greed and obsessive acquisition is now being exposed in the “high-beam lights” of truth and justice. No one can escape the intense exposure! All shadow of egoic covetousness is being flushed from our planetary system and washed out in a wave of cleansing recovery. We can no longer accept and adapt to the destructive elements of the human psyche that propel an endless pursuit of money, power and prestige. This must come to an end! We’ve come to a time in human history that we can no longer tolerate the destructive greed of those in powerful positions. It has been centuries of this pastime installed in the collective consciousness that allows it to take place. We have been passively allowing our elected officials and corporate CEOs to game the system in their own self-interests. The world can no longer ignore the atrocities being enacted upon a free nation, in the guise of personal protection. It is abhorrent! And so we come to a time in this great nation where we need to stand up and disavow all approval or sanctity for this behavior and allow the natural process of dissolution to take place. We do not need to save this current financial system. It must be demolished, so that the new world can begin. We can no longer expect our public officials in the government to support our best interests. They have a higher power to answer to! We can no longer count on many of the established systems to provide for our needs or support our personal quests for a meaningful, productive life. It is not there to support us! And so, we need to redirect how we pursue life’s full potential in ways that can be satisfying and fulfilling, but also embodying a deeply profound purpose of re-building a New Earth reality. This is the time to embrace how we can fulfill our deepest needs and desires while re-affirming the greatest quality of humanity – compassion for all life on the planet. When we can effectively step into the shoes of someone who “walks the talk” then we begin to radiate a different reality. It is when we are no longer concerned with how much we own, but with how much can we contribute, that our lives will change and improve! Now is not the time to be concerned about what is falling down in collapse, but a time to weather the storm knowing the dawn of a new day is near! We are not being asked to sacrifice our joy or happiness during this time of upheaval. Actually, it is the very opposite! The more that we can focus on the New World vision and hold it in our hearts, and feel its power and presence inside our core, then we are entering a realm of true happiness. It is available now! All it takes to achieve this grand transition is to alter what we project into our future. For the very nature of this human world reality is operating as a holographic insert, where all we need to do is determine just what kind of “eye view” we will perceive our lives from. In a sense, our minds and emotions set the tone for what kind of human story we project into the world. With this knowledge we can begin to sway and influence more and more the way we see the world, and how we can become more involved with the nuances and reflections we are looking into. It works like a human filter, this mind view, and it operates as a lifetime repository of all that floats and flows through our minds and emotions. These flowing streams of thoughts and feelings persuade the flavor of our life experience to be loving and powerful, or destructive and hurtful. How we then respond and react to these images in our projection screen will then determine what becomes a “tried and true” pattern of behavior and belief. No longer are we co-creating our lives from a clean slate, but beginning to surround ourselves with outer reflections of our inner state of disappointment, despair and dis-ease. Our power lies within, and we can begin to recognize just how much our infected minds and emotions are truly affecting the very nature of our existence. When we come into contact with these established mental patterns in a litany of life-long scenarios and subsequent emotional pain, how in the world can we change? How can we break free of the imprisonment that has over-taken our free spirits and creative minds? Where did all the fun go? Why are we still beating our heads against the wall of insurrection and despotism? Why can’t we state that we are tired of this game and want to set it all straight? When did the world become such a tragic drama-queen falling apart at the seams? We must remember that this world view we are stuck in has come upon us from many centuries of destruction and dissolution, now in its prime! And when we witness the thousands of ways it has destroyed the very fiber of our being, why in god’s name would we strive to save it? Let it go down in the manner it was meant to dissolve! It cannot be saved! So we all must just get on with life, and lift our spirits up into the New Earth hologram with our new visions and projections of life-affirming endeavors. Not only can we survive, but we can proliferate. We are not tied to what is dissolving, it is already dead. We are no longer dependent on a system that does not sustain human life in its glory. It has already proven it cannot support the Whole! The Universe is not supporting its extension into the New Earth consciousness. It is incongruent! We must realize how much this old system has been destroying the very nature of joyous celebration life was meant to be. Meg Benedicte, at http://soulfulservices.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=….)

By Emcye Edwards on 11/10/2008 2:44 pm

e-mail alert

To Liz Peek: I thank you. I will be very interested to read your articles. If I had been sitting with you at that dinner party I think I would have remained at the table and asked what’s his name to help in the kitchen or better yet, suggest all the men clean up and we women remain––sans cigars and brandy––––well, maybe the brandy.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 11/10/2008 5:56 pm

e-mail alert

Hey, Lily, I was struck the same way as you were by this story. And being a “liberated woman” really had nothing to do with it. Half of that dinner party were forgetting their manners by engaging in a deep conversation which they believed (wrongly or not) the others could not follow nor were interested in. Dinner party conversation should include everyone. The host and/or hostess should have steered the conversation elsewhere. I mean, the world’s finances over dinner? Yuck. Of course, their overall attitude was pretty sexist and patronizing as well. I would have excused myself early and found better company.

By Susan B on 11/11/2008 11:55 pm

Seems to me the majority of companies which are in financial trouble, went bankrupt or went under have been headed by men. And, it seems the majority of jobs which have been lost have been held by men. Lots of women occupy jobs in fields which are still growing, for instance health care and education. Could this mean that men are in a recession and women are not? Maybe that’s the reason the economy is as it is….men who think they know it all just won’t admit they don’t and keep doing their “I am smart on economics” song and dance, and when women are given a chance to make a rebuttal and show ‘em we can add, subtract and multiply, some women think by staying still and winking, women have won. !? I would have NEVER gone to the kitchen.

By Rainbow Power on 11/11/2008 5:56 am

e-mail alert

ha! Rainbow, I love your first paragraph! What I find amusing, as a woman, is that there are still those who limit themselves, with the ‘gender’ thing…instead of measuring what needs to be done, with what one is capable of doing, if they ‘chose to’. I am a lousy cook! My brother on the other hand, is a superb cook—he can make ‘something’ out of nothing and it even tastes good, looks good, and is worth a second helping, with anticipation of the leftovers as something to look forward to! And he even cleans up after himself! But, I chose to be the one who does the final clean-up in the kitchen—-not because I am a woman, but because it needs to be done, and I am capable of working as part of the team that allows me to eat great food! In my family, the women ALWAYS handled the money——even when I was married, my husband, who had LOTS of authority in his work, flat out told me, he was prone to spending everything in his pocket…and that if I wanted a savings account, he would not be upset if I handled the money, instead of him——please! Shift happens! Some may have forgotten their 3rd grade history lesson, about the ways of the American Indians, discovered by the those that came over on the Mayflower. The women of the Indian tribes chose their male ‘chief’—and if their chief was not doing the job, as the women thought it should be done—-simply chose a NEW chief! Oh the men were given the glory of a title—but they had to earn it! If they EVER stepped outside the lines regarding the greater good of the tribe, from the consensus viewpoint of the women—in favor of an ego—-they were replaced! simple! During our World Wars, it was the women who made the difference at home, while the men went off to war….they were deemed equal in war, for their contributions to the bigger picture… Today, women are more equal, in that it is not automatically assumed they are stupid, or have no value other than to procreate. As I remember how it was when I was a child, it was the women of my extended family, who made sure everything ‘worked’….the men got the job and brought home the paycheck, and the women determined how that paycheck got distributed…and then when my biological father died, and my mother had to do it all, until she re-married, she was definitely put in her ‘place’ by the men at her place of employment—-even though she was often a lot smarter than the ones making the decisions….and more capable—she was not only raising the family, she was bringing home the bacon!!!! Men wanted to be men! Who defined what a man was? Men! who needed to feel important! WHY? Because deep down inside they knew the woman was just as important to making things work—-and society, in past generations, still needed to have the approval of women, defined as ‘being chosen to be the chief’. I would much rather be defined as a person, one who is capable and willing to make my own choices, instead of one who lives by the ‘shoulds’ and ‘should-nots’ defined by others. heck! Most of the smartest people I know, are women! And they are smart enough to know when to ask for help when they are not adept as something, smart enough to know when it’s important to say no, smart enough to understand that helping in the kitchen may NOT be a big-deal gender issue.

By Patty E on 11/11/2008 3:11 pm

e-mail alert

And one more thing—-As I watched the hearings on C-span, during the meltdown of this country, this past year, I was angry! Angry that those ‘men’ that had so much power and control of this economy, spent more effort on hiding their ‘mistakes’ and their ‘war tactics against the economy of the world’, in a ‘winner take all’ GAME they played—-were not able to foresee the consequences of their actions—maybe they did, and just didn’t care. Thank goodness we have collectively chosen a ‘new chief’, reflecting the generation of co-operation, community, collaboration, and synergy—-and equality of the genders.

By Patty E on 11/11/2008 3:25 pm

e-mail alert

Quite honestly, I find a lot of women (and a lot of my friends) find it too much work to know about finances (there are men like this too). They leave it to their husbands and let it go. It takes time to manage a budget, talk about investments, college accounts, retirement, mortgages, wills, track expenses, etc. I know, because I do it. I started when I was single and my husband and I consult together regularly. You have to be willing to learn and spend time on it. Unfortunately, a lot of people would rather watch tv. Look at the statistics and you’ll see.

By Susan Easterday on 11/12/2008 3:53 pm

e-mail alert

What a wonderful idea. Although I do the best I can to educate myself, and have a wonderful friend who was in the bond mkt educating me, it would be helpful to have some of these ideas clarified so that WHEN I decide to fight the corporate greed and the co-dependent government officials, I have a firm grasp of what I am talking about. This bailout is another example of the government rescuing its friends as opposed to doing what’s best for its citizens. I read this morning that there is a chance that US govt. bonds will lose their AAA rating. There is more than a chance. I have seen this coming for a while now. There is no oversight of the outgoing funds and no integrity about taking more than is needed, if there were we wouldn’t be seeing all of this info about bonuses still going out to the guys who got these banks into this mess. What they really should be getting is jail time, but no one is talking about that…Anywhere.

By CYNTHIA NEIL on 11/13/2008 11:03 am

e-mail alert

Liz, Thanks, I’m ready to learn and make money! OK, maybe just learn. Even if some people “I’ve called the entire thing right” or allowed their eyes to glaze-over, I’m sure your posts will provide something for everyone to learn. I’m an eyes glaze over gal, who needs to change. What an opportunity to learn and grow - not be so closed minded because they know it all. Will you talk about 401K’s in terms of rolling over to plan when leaving a company. With the opportunity to diversify from the roll over. I’m in a situation now where I rolled over my 401K’s from 3 companies. I rolled over to an IRA retirement plan. I thought it was a 401K roll over. Is there a way I can roll the IRA to an 401K? If possible, please discuss in one of your topics.

By Barbara Taylor on 11/13/2008 11:27 am

e-mail alert

This economic system you are discussing is ultimately flawed because it still works on the ‘greed is good’ scenario. It didn’t work last century and it sure isn’t going to work any better this millennium. The solutions we need have to be both fair and equitable for all people - and not ‘top heavy’. To merely educate women in the old system will not help them survive. Many people who thought they understood the financial situation found, to their anguish, that everything had a ‘mind’ of its own and none of the regular rules applied once the downturn happened. Right now, even with almost every country bailing out the financial institutions, it has not led to a leveling out of the situation. The stock markets are still dropping; jobs are still being lost; our superannuation and savings are still not very secure - and yet we hope that this avalanche will cease. Are we naive? There has to be better ways, and we, as women with families must be the leaders in making another system - one which will not be subject to the whims of greedy people. This means we need to encourage small local businesses which hire more people and are not merely using the system to make massive of profit for themselves. These businesses will keep the money in your locality and this will kick start the community’s economy. Large corporations have for decades drained the money away from our regions, and their method of ‘slash and burn’ have seen jobs cut and local businesses undercut, while they took our hard earned money and contributed very little in return. The speculation and ‘gambling’ people are doing on the stock market has to end. It causes the wild fluctuations we are currently seeing. It can make or break a company in a very short period of time. If we are going to use an economic system as a basis for our society we will have to use one which makes life fair for all men, women and children on this planet. It should encompass new ideas and concepts which will work to be sustainable for ourselves and our planet and which will help all mankind to move towards a brighter future. There are ways. If I have found them, you can too. Ask me if you want to know more.

By Karen Fiala on 11/13/2008 6:35 pm