Karen Ho Featured in Princeton Alumni Weekly

Karen Ho, author of Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, is featured in the new issue of Princeton Alumni Weekly. Ho did her research while studying anthropology at Princeton in the mid 1990s. Shortly after beginning her research, she realized she did not know enough about finance to ask the proper questions, so she interviewed with on-campus recruiters and took a job with Bankers Trust. Mark F. Bernstein writes in PAW: "Although Ho told potential employers that she intended to return to graduate school and write a book about Wall Street culture, it seemed that her more salient qualifications — a Princeton pedigree and a pulse — assured her of a job." At the end of the article, PAW asks Ho what she'd most like to see reformed on Wall Street, and she replies, "changing the current bonus and compensation structure so that it is tied more closely to long-term productivity; reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, which barred commercial banks from engaging in riskier investment-banking practices; and rebuilding a social safety net for senior citizens and those with lower incomes." Let's hope some Princeton alums on Wall Street and in Washington are reading this article!