Your Shadow

From 1995 to 1997, I worked on Wall Street as an investment banker structuring asset back securities (i.e., bonds) mostly ones made up of subprime mortgages.  It was the very beginning of what would mushroom (severe understatement) into the housing bubble and the financial meltdown of 2008.  Although it is far too technical (and boring) to talk about what I worked on, let’s just say that I helped create and sell one of the first re-securitizations of subprime mortgages.  You put the loans together to make one bond, then put some of the bonds from different offerings together to make another bond.  The bonds in the second offering being made up of the bottom (i.e., not so good) pieces of the good bonds, all put together in a way to make them good bonds.  The concept got taken sooo much further with CDO’s, credit default swaps, etc., but the underlying premise is the same – package bad (i.e., junkier bonds) together to make good ones.  Yes, sell the same thing twice.  And we all know how that ended.

So when I watch films like The Inside Job (absolutely amazing) and read articles like this one in the New York Times by Joe Nocera, I feel like I have an insider’s view.  When I was on Wall Street, I actually believed what I was doing was of service to investors, finance companies and ultimately to borrowers.  How could better access to credit for a consumer to buy a home/consolidate debt be a bad thing?  This was before I experienced my own pain of borrowing what I could not pay back, suffering the shame (and personal stigma) of bankruptcy.  Leverage is indeed a cruel mistress.  You need only ask those in financial ruin who had no business owning the homes they did.

My lesson is this: euphoria, greed, depression, despair, ego are never places from which you should make a decision.  No one will be prosecuted for the financial cataclysm of 2007-2008 because we all had a hand in it.  Everyone is at fault and, as Joe Nocera wrote “delusion is a great defense”.  I do not mean for an instant to say that many should not be prosecuted.  They should.  The size and extent of their greed, absolute conflicts of interest and outright fraud is unparalleled.  However, stigma runs deep and when we all have our hand in the proverbial cookie jar, it is very hard to not only punish all the hands but also to say which hand deserves the biggest slap.

So what does this have to do with creative business?  Everything.

Circumstance dictates your situation, but does not define it.  What you believe today may be exposed as foolish (or highly suspect) tomorrow.  When you are shown the way to know better, you need to listen and question your (long) held beliefs.  You might be able to walk away when it all crumbles, but not without a steep price, to your soul if not your pocketbook.  If leverage is a cruel mistress, ego for a creative business owner is the ultimate dysfunctional relationship.  You are in the precarious position of having to create art every day, simultaneously serving your own vision and that of your clients.  Your ego must be allowed to express itself and, at the same time, understand it is not all about you.  Just when you think you are being selfless, humble, a person of integrity and faith, your ego will test you.

The financial crisis shows just how far we/you can go down the rabbit hole.  When you believe (or talk yourself into believing) that there is one motive behind all that you do, you are deluded.  And in that delusion you rob yourself of any possibility of clarity in the moment.  Better to strive to accept your own humanity and your shadow – the good and not-so-good motives behind all that you do – if only that you can listen when you are not where you should be.