Ashley Elizabeth Miller

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Democracy is a dirty word. Well, not so dirty as it was unappealing to U.S. voters in the lead up to November 2024, and it might even be deterring Republican readers from local news sites, Nieman Lab argued in March.

But I think we can all agree, the aspirational ideal of democracy is a good thing.

It gets fuzzy, however, when Wall Street says it seeks to “democratize” the market. Trump, for instance, is looking to allow retail investors and Americans with 401(k)s to speculate how they wish—including via private equity funds.

Alexander Hamilton would’ve scoffed at this proposal, taken at face value. He did not have faith in We The People—the bedrock of our democracy. I learned this firsthand from Yale University’s most-studied professor on said founding father, Joanne Freeman, during a panel she spoke on with John Ragosta, an expert on Thomas Jefferson — from where else but — the University of Virginia.

“Hamilton did not have faith in the people,” Freeman said.

This was part of a UVA-Alumni event in Manhattan. I was a guest. The professor panel came before the main event: a performance of Hamilton! (My favorite tune came from the King of England: “You’ll be back… Wait and see…”)

My only friends who’ve seen Hamilton are those who currently have a high paying job. Case in point, my best friend, who has seen the show more than once, is a junior analyst at JPMorgan.

Speaking of ole’ JP, here’s a pop quiz for you: Where and when did John Pierpont Morgan die? Who took over his eponymous bank when he did? Answer: Rome, and his son, Jack — a man who preferred his privacy while at the helm due to an incident from childhood in which he was kidnapped.

Someone call Ken Jennings, because these are questions for Jeopardy! 

But seriously, I just started reading Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book 1929. So far… it’s been a real page-turner about what the Big Bankers did and did not know leading up to the Great Depression.

Thomas Lamont, the son of a minister from upstate New York who worked his way through Harvard all the way to a partnership at JPMorgan in 1911, is a central figure in Part One of the book.

I’d never heard of Sorkin before seeing him on CBS’ 60 Minutes last week. (Sorry if you gasped.) I wasn’t impressed with how he spoke to Lesley Stahl. But what do I know… I’m just another critic.

Besides, my opinion swiftly shifted after reading his piece in New York Times Magazine this week.

A large part of Sorkin’s press tour is him getting the point across: a bubble is ballooning on Wall Street—the question is when it will burst.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, on another recent CBS segment told Stahl that he’s on board with Trump’s idea to “democratize” private markets via opening up 401(K) funds. (Not really news.)

Anyway, no one knows how this will go, but I’d speculate: in the end, no one will be thinking about democracy.