Ciao, Grasso!

My first, semi-serious reaction to the sacking of New York Stock Exchange president, Richard Grasso, who worked his way up from $82.50 a week in 1968 to a platinum parachute of $140 million?

"They"--the old-line WASPocracy--will do anything to stick it to a spaghetti bender who does good! If Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice (which of course it isn't), then busting a goombah's chops is the last acceptable prejudice against European Americans (pop culture may be awash in knuckle-dragging goodfellas but when's the last you even heard a Polish joke?). This is the sort of thing that my sainted mother, the former Therese Guida--who grew up speaking Italian and whose own mother was once kept out of the US for years due to the 1920s' racist immigration laws--used to talk about.

Then an Italian American (whose name even ends in a vowel) I trust on financial matters pointed out, "Fuck that puny thieving scumbag. The interlocking compensation committee scam that Grasso benefited from isn't much different than a bunch of mob bosses getting together on the bocce court to decide how to carve up territory."

Whatever the truth of the matter, this much is certain: The NYSE is an interesting example of self-regulation that is responding to investor concerns. The fact that various public entities are among its biggest investors muddies the waters a bit, but it provides an illustration of how markets correct themselves.