<p>Either one would be fine, though CS makes somewhat more sense. Also, your school has a stronger reputation in CS than in EE.</p>
<p>BCEagle brings up a good point. Everyone assumes finance is a career that leads to riches. Well not everyone in finance ends up wealthy, you have to be good at what you do to end up there, especially in these economic times...</p>
<p>I wonder what the median salary for a finance job is... I imagine it's not as high as everyone thinks it is...</p>
<p>Did some looking around out of curiosity.</p>
<p>PayScale</a> - Business Analyst, Finance/Banking Salary, Average Salaries by Years Experience</p>
<p>
[quote]
The median offered salary for Finance positions during the observed period is 90,000$. This is 23% higher than the median salary for all observed jobs. Top paid Finance positions are offered with salary 250K and above.
The offered salary for entry level Finance positions seen recently is around 30K. Approximately 4% of all published positions are entry level.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Lacero, I'm troubled that you think that discrete math is not applicable to anything in the real world and that computer scientists are "code monkeys". I could call EE's circuit monkeys, but at that point we've just degenerated to name calling.</p>
<p>The only point I was trying to make is that Math / CS are general enough to allow for a fair amount of overlap with things the OP could actually use in Finance. Most of an EE degree would be time wasted (as far as content, perhaps not as far as developing intellectual maturity, but all majors do that).</p>
<p>To me, if he's just going to turn around and do Finance after undergrad, and all he wants is a quantitative and computational literacy from his undergraduate education, then Math or CS would be best.</p>
<p>I also think you're a little heavy-handed with your judgment of the usefulness of certain areas of math. Perhaps if you had any experience with the subjects you mentioned, you would better understand their applications.</p>
<p>Our group has two openings for CS majors and we have been interviewing. One guy that we interviewed that would be an excellent hire will most likely go to the competition as they are offering more job flexibility. I know that there are CS jobs out there. I don't know what the market is like for finance folks. I would guess that there are finance jobs at companies for regular finance functions. I don't know that there are a lot of megabuck IB-type jobs out there.</p>
<p>@BCEagle91</p>
<p>I don't understand what you are trying to say.</p>
<p>Is it that people, businesses and organizations should stop investing? Banks should stop lending money for college tuition, house payments, cars etc. People should not have access to insurance and should pay for health and dental care in cash?</p>
<p>Please think about what you are saying.</p>
<p>Warren Buffett
Donald Bren
Bernard Osher
Michael Bloomberg
Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr.
George Soros
Kirk Kerkorian
Sandy and Joan Weill</p>
<p>Just some of the greatest minds in finance, wealthiest individuals to walk the planet and also some of the most generous philanthropists. These men have probably touched more lives than a lot of aspiring med students ever will. </p>
<p>I guess it turns out that not everyone who wants to or does work in finance is as greedy as you say they are.</p>
<p>Back in the late 1990s we had kids piling into Computer Science and CS-related majors to get aboard the gravy train that became known as the internet bubble. We all know how that turned out. CS enrollments plunged though they are starting to recover.</p>
<br>
<p>We essentially had a shadow banking system pumped up by an asset bubble. This gave many a feeling of wealth and so they borrowed on their supposed wealth and spent the money further pumping up the economy. You had a virtuous cycle. Those collecting the fees made out like bandits. All of a sudden, these financial whizkids discovered that it might not be a good idea to loan half-a-million to someone making $50,000 a year. The collapse of the housing bubble turned into a vicious cycle resulting in reduced consumption due to a negative wealth effect that made people feel poorer so that they don't spend which results in businesses closing shop, laying off more people that can't spend.</p>
<br> [QUOTE=""]
<p>Is it that people, businesses and organizations should stop investing? </p>
<br>
<p>No. But they should set their business expectations according to the new economic environment.</p>
<p>A lot of people should have stopped investing about a year ago. Their portfolios would have been better off if they had a safe place to put it. In economic declines, you found out who the scammers are. Well, we've found a few. I expect more to come.</p>
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<p>Banks should stop lending money for college tuition, house payments, cars etc. </p>
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<p>In many cases they aren't.</p>
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<p>I've been an investor in Berkshire Hathaway on and off for many years and generally know more about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway than compared to the person that has never purchased Berkshare shares. Berkshire has lost about 40% from its highs at $150,000 per share. His high-profile purchases of C and GE debt don't look so hot right now.</p>
<p>That said, Buffett's approach to running his businesses and compensating his employees is far from what you'd see on Wall St. Buffett called derivatives "weapons of mass financial destruction". Buffett is a hard-nosed businessman and he's a shark. He also thinks for the long-term and is actually in the business of making real things and providing real services.</p>
<br> [QUOTE=""]
<p>Just some of the greatest minds in finance, wealthiest individuals to walk the planet and also some of the most generous philanthropists. These men have probably touched more lives than a lot of aspiring med students ever will.</p>
<br>
<p>I guess you're looked at well if you lie, cheat, crush the competition, screw up the economies of other countries, etc. Bernie Madoff was a philanthropists too. Some of the names on your list make me want to throw up.</p>
<p>
[quote]
code monkey
[/quote]
[quote]
circuit monkey
[/quote]
</p>
<p>proof monkey : )</p>
<p>lol. And aerospace engineers... yes, winged monkeys. The mech e's... wrench monkeys (get it? lol that was a pun lollolololl1lll1o1lo10l1lo)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Just some of the greatest minds in finance, wealthiest individuals to walk the planet and also some of the most generous philanthropists. These men have probably touched more lives than a lot of aspiring med students ever will. </p>
<p>I guess it turns out that not everyone who wants to or does work in finance is as greedy as you say they are. </p>
<p>
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There are wealthy people in EVERY career path. You can't compare the best of one world to the average of another. </p>
<p>I'm sure your average med student will touch way more lives than your average finance or business student. Most people don't become individuals that go down in history like those you are speaking of.</p>
<p>It's hard to find those that care to defend Wall St these days. How about the heads of Lehman, Citi, Merrill, Bank owned by America, Bear, Morgan, etc. These people that made huge salaries and bonuses to serve the shareholders of their companies have brought them to ruin in some cases and near ruin in others.</p>
<p>In the meantime, we are emptying out the treasury of our country and jacking up debt up the wazoo to try to keep these companies running. The latest figure that I saw was an expected $3 trillion to the banking sector. What other industry can screw up so badly, get paid huge for doing it, get bailed out with taxpayer money and then screw the taxpayer over again?</p>
<p>I'd guess that noone here lived during the Great Depression but maybe you have grandparents that do. Why do you think that so many people from that era hated bankers?</p>
<p>
[quote]
What other industry can screw up so badly, get paid huge for doing it, get bailed out with taxpayer money and then screw the taxpayer over again?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The automotive industry?</p>
<p>The automotive industry just wants a measly $35 billion. For now anyways. One other difference is that they actually make something that you can use instead of robbing their shareholders and customers blind.</p>
<p>It sounds like you have a relatively low opinion of the financial system. In theory, it's a good idea. Money is capital, just like physical capital, and if you need some of it, you go to a bank and get some.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The automotive industry just wants a measly $35 billion. For now anyways. One other difference is that they actually make something that you can use instead of robbing their shareholders and customers blind.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It was kind of a joke =P</p>
<p>Money is debt. The crazy thing is that we think of debt as capital.</p>
<p>The problem with fiat currencies is that there is a political inclination to inflate as you make a bunch of people happier. At least for a while. It's like an addictive drug. You get hooked on inflation because it initially makes more people feel wealthier. And then prices start to rise, sometimes exponentially and people complain about it and politicians complain about the greedy xxxxx companies. In general, we need asset bubbles to keep this game going and the two major ones are the real estate and stock markets. Japan has had a lot of experience with these dual asset bubbles and now we're going through the same thing. You would think that we would have learned by watching them or learning from the Great Depression.</p>
<p>I guess that this is why Kondreytieff's long wave theory works. People forget over generations and make the same mistakes over and over again.</p>
<p>But getting back to fiat currencies for a moment. We have the privilege of managing the world's reserve currency so we have an extraordinary privilege. We've abused that privilege for about 15 years but we continue to get bailed out by most of the rest of the world. They hold our debt and can't really do much with it lest our currency collapses. This would reduce demand for their products to the point where it would create political stability in their home countries.</p>
<p>"Money is capital, just like physical capital, and if you need some of it, you go to a bank and get some."</p>
<p>Harry Liu (Asia Times) said something like: Asia makes goods that they sell to the United States and gets paper in return. The US manufactures paper to exchange for goods in Asia. Doesn't that seem dumb? We're going to create $1 trillion, $2 trillion, $3 trillion to stimulate the economy. What does that do to our debtors? It doesn't matter. They can't spend it anyways. They tried to buy one of our major appliance companies many years ago. It didn't go over well with Congress so they dropped the idea. We won't let other companies buy our means of production in high-visibility industries so they get to keep their dollars.</p>
<p>Fish out a dollar out of your wallet and read what it's good for. It's redeemable for a dollar. The US Dollar index was 122 several years ago. It's currently 86.22. Is a dollar a dollar? The last major debt crisis was in Argentina several years ago. Their middle-class was wiped out. The government seized private accounts - they wanted access to any hard currency that they could find. Their debt problem exercise gives a glimpse of the destruction of the middle-class due to debt. Our debt is orders of magnitude larger. The main difference is that the US dollar is the reserve currency of the world. But that's been getting a little shaky.</p>
<p>The problem with fiat currencies is political interference as it becomes politically unacceptable to have economic downturns. So we prop things up, inflate, borrow, etc. so that we can keep the party growing. With modern financial tools, we were able to blow the bubble higher and higher and higher. Until it popped. Now we have pain. Far more pain than we would have had without the bubble. So many assets were mispriced. So much labor was mispriced. So many big salaries were paid to move money around. So many homoaners were suckered into borrowing huge amounts of money. So many investors believing what companies told them got wiped out.</p>
<p>Atana, another member of this board, generally has a lot to say about the scam of student loans. You can do a search for him to find many rants against this predatory system of financing colleges to the point where we would be better just spending the money directly on students instead of subsidizing student loan companies.</p>
<p>In other countries, you might keep some gold, silver, diamonds or foreign currencies around in case you currency experienced a run if your country was inflating or your currency was under attack from a guy like Soros.</p>
<p>I spoke to a representative of Fidelity Investments in their bond department as I wanted to get a better feel for the Federal guarantee program for money market assets. We spent quite a bit of time talking about a lot of things including holding foreign currencies, precious metals, commodities and where short-term treasuries were going and how they were managing their treasury money market in the face of zero or negative returns. She told me that they were pushing out maturities to try and generate some kind of yield.</p>
<p>We also talked about the general education level of investors and the level of panic out there. People are just moving from asset class to asset class based on what they're hearing from the business shows on television. And they're getting cleaned out. She admitted to me that they got killed on the market downturn. I mentioned the use of Technical Analysis as a means of loss control but I don't think that she was familiar with it.</p>
<p>Is it really fair to so many people to force them into a casino to try to grow and maintain their assets for expenses and retirement?</p>
<p>There are a lot of people out there hurting big-time and I'm surprised at the anger out there over our current system. Look at the article on Davos and how bank and finance executives are laying low and pulling out of Davos. That idiot Thain was scheduled to talk at Davos. BoA wasn't too happy about that.</p>
<p>^ wow that was a long post</p>
<p>I've seen longer.</p>
<p>That's what she said.</p>