Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

There is a kerfuffle underway about a statue called "fearless girl" recently installed in the financial district of Manhattan. It isn't the biggest of controversies, but it does have some symbolic significance, and there is a pragmatic lesson here about how markets work. http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2017/04/wheres-the-bear-.html#comments   Since 1989, the financial district has featured the "Charging Bull," a statue by Arturo Di Modica. He originally located it directly in front of the New York Stock Exchange, but it was subsequently moved to a small park in the neighborhood. In March of this year, a four foot tall bronze statue of a grade school aged girl (pigtails and billowing dress) standing in the path of the bull in the usual stance of defiance (legs spread, hands on hips, face forward toward the danger) made its appearance. Fearless Girl is sufficiently close to Charging Bull that they appear to be a single work , which has Di Modica ...

Jason Kelly, in a recent book about the private equity industry, tells a story about a visit he made to Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan in November 2011. As you may remember, the “Occupy Wall Street” folks had taken over the park two months before and were seeking to focus public anger about “Wall Street,” both as a literal and as a metaphorical term.   When people think of “Wall Street” they think first of the big investment banks, the folks who received their much-discussed bail-outs in the fall of 2008. They don’t necessarily think of private equity: of Bain Capital, or Carlyle, or even Blackstone. But at least some portions of the Occupy movement wanted to change this. As Kelly was walking around the park he saw as sign that said, “No Bulls, No Bears, just Pigs.”   That was catchy: it played upon well-known animal metaphors for Wall Street optimists and pessimists respectively.  But he also saw a sign that was a good deal less catchy. It was made up of ora...