Wall Road is operating away from DEI and but its commerce group continues to push and promote the dubiously authorized hiring apply that critics declare results in race- and gender-based quotas, On The Cash has discovered.
The Securities Business and Monetary Markets Affiliation, recognized extensively on Wall Road by its acronym SIFMA, touts itself because the “voice of the nation’s securities industry.” It’s Wall Road’s advocate earlier than lawmakers and the White Home, whose central mission is to advertise “effective and resilient capital markets.”
It additionally sees as a part of its mission the advocacy of variety, fairness and inclusion insurance policies, in keeping with folks near the group.
One member informed On The Cash that he attended the group’s authorized convention earlier within the week in Austin, Texas, and shared with me its agenda. Among the many highlights was a “DEI Advocate Award” and a celebration celebrating the intersectionality of the attendees.
SIFMA’s web site, a member identified, is replete with DEI celebrations and advocacy. In 2023, the group supported congressional laws that will “increase gender, racial, and ethnic diversity on corporate boards,” which positive does sound like quotas of the variability the Supreme Courtroom dominated unconstitutional that very same yr.
A bit unusual given the tenor of the instances. This DEI obsession runs counter to the White Home’s new color-blind hiring agenda, and that SCOTUS ruling putting down using race and intercourse in school admissions. Amid this sea change, SIFMA’s members — huge banks and brokerages – are eschewing DEI and all types of company wokeness. As I used to be first to report, Jamie Dimon joined different banks in exiting DEI, taking “equity” out of his variety packages at JPMorgan.
Fairness, after all, is a code phrase for quotas or assured outcomes. Dimon and his fellow CEOs know they run companies which are extremely regulated by the president’s SEC, DOJ, Treasury Division and extra. In the event that they’re violating the regulation by DEI, they will face repercussions.
That’s why I pushed the flacks over at SIFMA for a easy rationalization on why they might advocate insurance policies that might get their members in bother.
A spokeswoman for SIFMA defended the group’s variety efforts, including in a press release that “With respect to SIFMA’s policies, we are a member-led organization and as such our priorities are determined by our members and everything SIFMA does on behalf on the industry – broadly speaking and at all of our conferences – is always in full accordance with federal law.”
However some SIFMA members are essential of those woke, variety efforts, which they are saying comes from the highest of the group. Its CEO and president, Ken Bentsen, was a liberal congressman from Texas (his uncle was Lloyd Bentsen, a long-time democratic Senator from Texas, VP candidate and Invoice Clinton’s Treasury Secretary), who has made the place more and more woke in messaging and apply, they add
Bentsen declined to remark by the spokeswoman.
Once more, if Jamie Dimon, and the folks at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley say DEI is one thing that should go the best way of the buggy whip, why are the folks they’re paying at SIFMA (by membership dues) nonetheless pushing it on its members and advocating it earlier than Congress?
