Steady Teddy
I have a 10-inch high bust of Teddy Roosevelt that I was given as an award for something or other a few years ago at a ceremony held at Federal Hall. Federal Hall is the building at Wall and Broad Street that is thought of as the center of the capitalist universe.
On the other three corners sit, 16 Wall Street, 23 Broad Street and the New York Stock Exchange building. 16 Wall Street is the historic headquarters building for Bankers Trust Company, the big fiduciary firm started in 1903 and the innovative Merchant Banking leader of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, where I spent 25 years and ended my tenure as a member of the Management Committee. 23 Wall Street is the historic headquarters of J.P. Morgan, the most prestigious banking name in the history of banking. That building, in it’s post-peak transformation, was bought by the firm called AFI (USA), the US subsidiary of the public Israeli company that I ran as Chairman and CEO for two years. We had split the building into a big condo development and renovation for the upper floors (technically 15 Broad Street) and a retail section, which was the old main banking hall with the massive JP Morgan chandelier.
My connection to those two opposing corners is pretty strong. As for the other two opposing corners, I feel my statue of Teddy fills in the missing piece since I feel it connects me to Federal Hall. The fourth corner as the NYSE I connect to in three ways. First of all, my long-time friend and colleague, Dale, was the head of HR for NYSE for many years and that kind of made that her building. Secondly, my first banking gig involved the dematerialization of the paper securities that underlie the NYSE and all exchanges. That was the big event on Wall Street in the second half of the 1970’s since without it, trading would have ground to a halt and we would have all suffered. And finally, the NYSE is the solitary symbol of Wall Street, where I spent forty years coming up with the next new thing, one after another.
I feel strongly connected to that corner of Wall and Broad the way few others could, given my involvement with each and every corner. It is funny though, that I feel little or no nostalgia about the prospect of leaving this all behind whenever it suits us. Like most people, nostalgia for me often relates to places. I have spent a lifetime living in different places. When I count them, I make it 25 places in my 65 years. And that lumps together all of my five college years and ignores second homes in Ithaca, Columbia County Utah, the Hamptons and now California. What all that moving has caused is for me to be less connected to places than others. I try to keep my connections to people and let go of my connection to places.
But Teddy Roosevelt is different. He means something to me. Not so much the plaster-cast bust, but the thought of him. He was bold, he was well-read and accomplished, and he had a lust for life that matches my own vision of what I wish to be. Of all the adjectives that get applied to Teddy the man, none speaks to me more than the word Progressive. He lived and was a prime proponent of the Progressive Era in the United States. Yes, he was a Republican and yes, he was a conservative in many ways, but he spearheaded a period of widespread social activism and political reform that set the stage for the Twentieth Century success of the nation. Progressives set their sights on the blossoming problems of industrialization, urbanization, immigration and corruption. In many ways, he was preserving democracy for America in its new era. Between trust-busting and laying the seeds for suffrage and even civil rights, Teddy was the sort of savior that the U.S. needs now more than ever.
What are the problems we face now as a country and how would Teddy have grappled with them? We needn’t ask how he would have felt about Climate Change, between his love of conservation and nature and his distrust of big industry, he would be all over renewables and reducing carbon footprints. In terms of immigration, he was all about immigrants being required to be loyal to America, but he said very clearly, “(they) shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.” In his day he watched immigrants as a percentage of the U.S. population rise from 13% to 14% where today we are told that the U.S. is “full” with 10%. The absolute number of immigrants in the last year of Teddy’s term as president was actually greater than the number of immigrants we allow into the country today even though the population of the U.S. is more than three times as large and that of the world at large is five times as large.
Mr. Trump tells the coal miners he’s going to do great things for them and improve their lives, when nothing of the sort is remotely happening. Teddy, on the other hand, intervened in the coal miner’s strike and got J.P. Morgan himself (not the biggest fan of coal miners or unions in general) to agree to higher pay for fewer hours.
Roosevelt had no love lost for the politics of Washington and he fought the Congress on many things including the limitations of its power of the purse. A famous incident involving sending the Navy to Manila Bay certainly challenged the existing balance of power in Washington as much as anything Trump has done. But as we all have learned, Teddy spoke softly and carried a big stick on foreign policy. He had fought in Cuba and launched the Panama Canal project. But he knew who his allies were (he strengthened relations with Britain) and who needed to be kept at a distance (Germany, Japan and Russia). The Nobel Prize Committee saw his diplomacy as worthy of the Peace Prize, and unlike Trump, he didn’t ask to be considered for it.
I am connected to downtown New York and I feel a strong connection to Steady Teddy Roosevelt. My connection extends on many levels and it is confusing to be an acolyte of the great J.P. Morgan, to have owned the home of his bank, to have served a career on Wall Street, and yet to believe in the progressive principles that guided Teddy. He found his way through the contradictions as must I. What I know is that capitalism and progressivism are not in conflict, but you do have to believe that long-term capitalist value creation depends on nurturing human capital as much as financial capital. Therein lies the secret to our future.