Schapiro-Bair-Warren | The Tombstone Trio Arrives In Wall Street

There’s more high-level estrogen floating around this week than we can handle. Reading this week’s TIME cover story Schapiro, Bair, and Warren: Female Sheriffs of Wall Street, we also note that Washington state governor Chris Gregoire has joined the list of candidates to fill Elena Kagan’s job as Solicitor General, assuming that Kagan is confirmed.

Lurking around Forbes, the WSJ, Fortune, Bloomberg, we note that the common response to ‘the boys club created this financial mess all by themselves” is that women behave by the same testosterone-infused principles when they’re running things.

Always the boys drag out Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher to make their case. On occasion Queen Elizabeth I is also dredged up as proof that women are just as power-hungry and corrupt as men.

Therefore, they argue, it’s just fine that there are fewer than 3% of women at the help of Fortune 500 companies, and fewer women at the top of Wall Street companies than ever. If women held the power they would make the same best decisions for the firm. If not, they should be properly fired. Running a financial industries company is not about ethics and following procedures.

It’s about innovative new practices and products that absolutely no one except the guy who invented them can explain. Typically, there’s about a 20-year-run to the Supreme Court, where you win most, and lose a few.

The New Girls

Head of the SEC Mary Schapiro says there’s no hard feelings that men believe women don’t belong at the top in the financial services industry. The three women who are rolling up their sleeves to clean up Wall Street suggest that there’s perhaps an advantage to not having ties that bind.

“There are lots more women at the table now,” Schapiro says. And the women have learned how to work together better. Around Washington, women call this “amplification,” the extra juice that comes when powerful figures join forces to speak up against entrenched interests. As chairs of their commissions, both (Sheila) Bair and (Mary) Schapiro have independently consulted with Warren in recent months for advice on consumer rights. They have largely spoken with a united voice on financial reform, and when they gathered in late April for a TIME photo shoot, they promptly huddled to strategize on arguments to head off bank lobbyists’ efforts against the new derivatives regulation moving through the Senate. The measure, believed to be dead a few months ago, now looks likely to pass by the end of the month. The only question is whether it will have the teeth to prevent a repeat of the crisis of 2008. “Do you know how many little changes could be made in that statute to just cut the legs out from underneath it?” Warren asks.

Suddenly, we’re happy that these women don’t come from the hallowed halls of Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley.

Listening to Big Oil throw the ‘responsibility’ and liability balls from one lap to another this week, it’s become increasingly clear to most people that the American fairy tale of corporate responsibility and implied civic values is vacationing in St Barts or lodged in a bottle at the bottom of the Ionian Sea.

The “new sheriffs” tagged to clean up Wall Street says there’s a new term in town called “amplification”, defined as the extra juice that comes when powerful figures join forces to speak up against entrenched interests. There are plenty of American women who want to be the only babe in the boardroom, but not these women.

Everything I’ve read about them says the trio are hard-nosed, realistic pragmatists with no illusions how Wall Street feels about them. They’re not “it” girls and that’s OK with them.  A $10 million getaway place in Palm Beach isn’t in their future, and they will survive.

Can these brainiacs row a reform boat into New York Harbor and still have the protection of Ms. Liberty? Or will they be taken out by a shoulder missile hiding in the bushes of Jersey City.

Stay tuned. All bets are off, which is actually a good thing in a part of America typically very sure of itself. Trust me, they’re a bit concerned, gazing out those high-floor glass windows facing Lady Liberty.

More Reading:Perfect Marriage | Estrogen for Testosterone in Wall Street on NY Magazine cover story ‘What If Women Ran Wall Street” and Anne’s pre-Lehman fall essay: “Wall Street Needs Two Queens and a Great Dame”, written in Fall 2008.