Midweek News Briefs: More Women on Wall Street, Please; Condom Use Drops in Midlife; How to Help Loved Ones Die

"No woman in her right mind would let this happen": In the clip above,  Susan Scott tells the Women on Wall Street conference that "most deals that fail" are traceable in part to "a lack of emotional intelligence." If you've been thinking that way about the current meltdown, you're not alone.

Marie Wilson, former director of the Ms. Foundation  for Women, cites studies from the Pew Research Group as well as her  White House Project which showed that Americans rate women far more highly than men on creativity, intelligence, compassion,  and honesty — "the very traits that many would say is sorely lacking – from Wall Street to Capitol Hill."

More women in power, Wilson adds, might have prevented the current imbroglio:

With a proposed $700 billion rescue plan that would make already-suffering American taxpayers foot the bill for corporate capriciousness, it's near impossible to look at what has happened in the financial sector and not ask whether we would be having such devastation if more women were at the economic steering wheel.

Perhaps none had put it better than Sara Vines, in her humorous take for the The Times of London this week: "No sensible woman I know would have encouraged the selling of 120 percent mortgages to people who could barely afford their grocery bills. Such a think would be laughable, a bit like carrying of XXL condoms around in your pocket."

Maybe that explains the spiking STD rates….Speaking of condoms, it appears that all the TV ads and outreach to get teenagers to use them is working. But the closer people got to 40, says a new British study, the less likely they were to practice safe sex. That particular study was aghast at the dropoff in the 35-44 range, but Newsmix wonders if the numbers among seniors might be worse.

Caregiving as poetry: Those words aren't often spoken together. But Monday's essay by Drexel University physician Ellen Feld brings them together so completely that it's hard to excerpt, as she unpeels the multiple layers to the question asked by many parents as the end comes into sight: “If something should happen to me, and I couldn’t help myself, would you be willing to help me?” Here's a taste, one that whispers of Hemingway and Joan Didion:

She lived three more weeks — three weeks during which the only help she ever asked of me was to bring her chocolate milkshakes (which I did, often several times a day).

The night she died, I sat with her.

– Chris L.