Alright, Haslam scholars. It’s time to close the Excel sheets, put the calculator away and open this warning label of a book about Wall Street.
“Young Money” by Kevin Roose follows various Wall Street 20-somethings at trademark companies like J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs in the years after the 2008 stock market crash. This book is a rather easy read, exploring real-life characters that feel as familiar as your close friends. We experience the highs and many, many lows of what it is like to be a first- or second-year at a famous Wall Street bank.
Roose explores the journey of adolescents from prestigious Ivies like Columbia, Harvard and Princeton to crappy, old desks in NYC high-rises, covered in unopened pitch decks and Chinese takeout containers. The book jumps straight into the lives of these eight that are featured, experiencing their loss of important, life-long relationships, their anger and resentment of abusive bosses, and their breakdown of humanity as they go deeper and deeper into the machine that is the American finance system.
This book offers a stark cautionary tale to those young college students who dream of success on Wall Street. It details the grind of the meaningless, intensive slave labor one offers a bank for the first couple of years of employment, and the utter loss of meaning in life during the latter years of this lucrative career.
This book raises an important question: Who will we become if our only goal is to make money? Many come from not-so-affluent backgrounds where the only goal is to make it out. Others come from very affluent backgrounds, where families expect children to be as successful, if not more so, than their parents.
As American kids, it is ingrained in our minds that money and financial stability are the keys to happiness and success. But does money really buy happiness? No one wants to be poor, but do we really want to slave away for a yearly income that we can’t even enjoy?
As the world becomes more streamlined and our favorite brands and companies join faceless conglomerates, individuality and happiness could become farther and farther out of reach. So do we really want to join a soulless system that will put a dollar sign over a single mom’s face or a profit margin over a mom-and-pop small business?
Think about what you really want for your future. Re-evaluate those priorities, and then read this book. You might as well be semi-productive while procrastinating your homework.
Pick up at Hodges Library in the Miles Reading Room on the first floor or on Amazon for $11.53 for your own copy to keep!
