Poised to become the first female CEO of a major Wall Street firm, Zoe Cruz’s 25 year career at Morgan Stanley came to a sudden halt when she was fired this November, making her one of the high-ranking victims of the subprime mortgage crisis. In this week’s New York magazine, Joe Hagan chronicles her rise to the almost-top of the boys’-clubby world of finance, and questions the inevitability of Cruz’s status as one of the most powerful women on Wall Street, one of the most loathed women on Wall Street, and one of the most public scapegoats offered up by Wall Street.

Jezebel could not be more blasé on the trendy “’Women In Power: Fuck This, There Really Is No Way To Win Is There?’ meme,” but even they found at least one vignette from Cruz’s career that elicited a “whoa now here is something that absolutely would not go down the same way had Zoe been a dude.”

Dealbreaker offers their own assessment of the article and the debate on Cruz’s departure from Morgan Stanley. “New York Magazine has a very good article about Zoe Cruz, the Morgan Stanley co-president who involuntarily resigned last November because (pick one) a. (In some people’s estimation) she was to blame for the company losing a few billion dollars b. A lot of people disliked her and told Mack they would leave if he made Cruz CEO c. Mack had to blame either himself or Cruz for some losses and he chose her. d. She was, you know, a girl, and the boys didn’t like that.”