Wall Street argues that its greed for money is a "counteracting" interest against other more evil passions such as racism and sexism. Because investment banks are so greedy, so singularly focused on money, they become money meritocracies: whoever makes them money will be rewarded regardless of background or identity. Of course, instead of understanding desire for money as itself a constructed "passion," most Wall Streeters see it as a naturalized state. Similarly, the Wall Street mantra that "money does not discriminate" resonates powerfully with the assumption of neoliberal economic theory that racism and other prejudices form "an impediment to efficient market transactions and [are] therefore likely to be overriden in the long run by the exigency to generate profit" [...]

Using money meritocracy as a dominant discourse of exceptionalism, investment banks differentiate themselves from corporate America, which they imagine to be caught up in the traditional "ol' boys' network." Unlike the bureaucratic, out-of-touch managers of most corporations, Wall Street bankers are a modern, renegade breed whose singular focus on money makes possible color-blind innocence and objectivity. [...] investment bankers did not have to be aristocrats, but could be "geeky quant-jocks" or amazing "chess players off the street". [...]