Nicholas Kristof, "Is Banking Bad?": Is Nicholas Kristof Worse?

Nicholas Kristof, in his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Is Banking Bad?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/opinion/kristof-is-banking-bad.html?ref=opinion), informs us:

"When financiers rig the system, they should remember the warning of John Maynard Keynes: 'The businessman is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.'

So university students would be wrong to mock their classmates who choose Citigroup over CARE. Banking and private equity aren’t evil, and I would never urge college students to stay away. Maybe today’s young socialist sympathizers, along with healthy regulation and a loud public outcry, can help rescue capitalism from the crony capitalists."

Needless to say, Kristof doesn't bother disclosing that his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, is a Senior Managing Director at Mid-Market Securities (http://www.mid-marketsecurities.com/team.html), who previously worked at Goldman Sachs as a vice president in its investment management division as a private wealth advisor. Have a look at the Bloomberg article entitled "Goldman Hires Pulitzer-Winning Journalist to Snare Millionaires" (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=agzMMPZAouLw&refer=home).

Perhaps for the benefit of his readers, Kristof, who says that he's "been sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street movement," would care to reveal his household income for 2011. That way we will be better able to understand "roughly and in some sense," how the Kristofs' "activities have contributed to society."

Talk about having your cake and eating it, too . . .

[The response of the Public Editor's office of The New York Times to my inquiry regarding Kristof's failure to indicate his wife's place of employment:

"Mr. Kristof is an Op-ed columnist, and he is granted a wide latitude to express his opinions. If Mr. Kristof, or any other columnist, had written about his or her spouses' employer without disclosure, then yes, that would be problematic. But that is not the case here. Prohibiting an op-ed columnist from writing about an entire industry in which his or her spouse is employed is an unnecessary burden. It doesn't seem that there is any conflict here."

My reply:

"Prohibiting an op-ed columnist from writing about an entire industry in which his or her spouse is employed would indeed be an unnecessary burden. No one is saying that Mr. Kristof shouldn't write about the banking and finance industry. On the other hand, when Mr. Kristof declares in his op-ed that he is 'sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street movement' without mentioning his wife's place of employment, he is playing both sides of the street unbeknownst to the readership of The Times, i.e. stating that he a sympathetic to OWS while enjoying all the benefits at home of being married to a senior managing director at a Manhattan investment banking firm. You say that there's no conflict, but don't you think Mr. Kristof's readership would want to be informed of this information, which clearly shapes his op-ed conclusion that it is 'okay' to work in the banking and finance industry. Sorry, but this doesn't smell right by any stretch of the imagination."]