<p>Bloomberg.com:</a> Opinion</p>
<p>Have at it . . .</p>
<p>When you tell a bunch of smart people to make money out of nothing(investment banking/wall street), they do it well. The only problem is that it's unsustainable. You can't keep making money forever without being a producer or service provider.</p>
<p>The guy who wrote the column was co-author of that book predicting the Dow would hit 36,000 this decade. So much for his abilities as a prognosticator. </p>
<p>Given that the author also has a Ph.D. in econ from Penn, he seems like an unlikely person to be railing about Ivy League hubris.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The guy who wrote the column was co-author of that book predicting the Dow would hit 36,000 this decade. So much for his abilities as a prognosticator.</p>
<p>Given that the author also has a Ph.D. in econ from Penn, he seems like an unlikely person to be railing about Ivy League hubris.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The guy was also a Columbia Business School professor for 6 years ('89-94) so it seems pretty disingenuous for a former Ivy League MBA professor to start laying the blame on Ivy League MBAs nice and thick as if he was so far removed from the very institutions he is railing against. </p>
<p>Another piece of irony (hypocrisy) is that he worked at the Fed (as an economist) from '92-'97 -- i.e. during a period which preceded the record low interest rates that laid the foundation for asset inflation, the housing bubble, over extension of credit, etc. that we are paying for today. The guy has a set of brass ones, I'll give you that.</p>
<p>If you ask me, sounds like a bitter guy who was about as close to Wall Street as a person can get (Columbia MBA prof, Fed Reserve economist) without ever reaping any of the material benefits. And now that it has all come crashing down, he feels the need to start pointing fingers? The guy should probably take a look deep in the mirror and keep his trap shut.</p>
<p>Some of the Ivy's most closely associated with wall street and investment banking will probably take a public relations hit and lose some of thier gloss. Those currently losing thier shine due to thier close association with the banksters are Harvard (see article above), Yale (bush and the gang ), Dartmouth ( both feeble treasury secretaries)and Princeton (Bernanke). Even the non-ivy Stanford is taking a beating this week as it's name is the same as the next big hedge fund ponzi scheme. </p>
<p>In the future higher status and prestige will go to those colleges most associated with engineering, manufacturing and agriculture because those are the things that we will need as a country to dig us out of the hole that the MBA's and IBankers got us in to.</p>
<p>Go MIT, Go Cornell, Go Caltech, Go Michigan</p>
<p>
[quote]
Another piece of irony (hypocrisy) is that he worked at the Fed (as an economist) from '92-'97 -- i.e. during a period which preceded the record low interest rates that laid the foundation for asset inflation, the housing bubble, over extension of credit, etc. that we are paying for today. The guy has a set of brass ones, I'll give you that.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't understand what you are saying. If his tenure at the Fed preceded the period of record low interest rates, then how did it lay the foundation of the housing bubble, easy credit environment?</p>
<p>Sherman,
I think you're right about some Ivies taking a hit on the Wall Street mess that has now infected the overall economy and cost trillions. I agree with your listing of Harvard, Dartmouth, and Princeton, but perhaps the one that will lose the most is U Penn and its Wharton School. Wall Street's boom period and the high rewards that many garnered had a direct connection to Wharton, both in terms of attracting faculty and student talent to the school and in bringing record amounts of alumni dollars. </p>
<p>As for your comments about engineering, I think you again are correct that this needs to be a field of greater emphasis in the American economy. IMO, there does seem to be a connection between when we began to export these jobs overseas and when the Wall Street bubble began. Engineering may not be as glamorous as Wall Street in its heyday, but a larger and improved mass of engineering talent might help the USA gain greater control over its economic future. </p>
<p>As for colleges that produce strong engineering graduates, I encourage you to greatly expand your list of top programs. Let's not play the "elite" game that so often dominated the hiring patterns of Wall Street and led to the concentration of power, prestige and money that benefited a relatively small group. This elitism bred an unfounded confidence and an arrogance (Masters of the Universe!!) that contributed to the current financial disaster and which needs to be unwound. </p>
<p>Open your mind and you eyes and give credence to much wider circle of schools that can produce fine grads, including the likes of UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, U Illinois, Purdue, U Texas, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, U Wisconsin, Penn State, Texas A&M, Duke, U Washington, Rice, and many more.</p>
<p>Outside the wacky world of CC, people know that Penn's welfare is most intimately tied up with that of the Medical-Industrial Complex, which will still be doing well in the Age of Obama and his magical forest of stimulating Asian money trees.</p>
<p>Penn has been skimming money off NIH grants to build up the rest of the University ever since Clinton doubled the NIH budget.</p>
<p>Yes, Penn and Wharton will be harmed by this as donors dry up, but not disproportionately so to the other Ivies, who have similar proportions of their alumni in Finance.</p>
<p>Penn was also much less dependent on endowment payouts, simply because they never had the luxury of a huge endowment to depend on.</p>
<p>Ultimately, alumni donations come from alumni who are not just successful, but who love their school. A great virtue of Penn's heavy use of ED is that its student body is not only the brightest (and most successful) it has ever been, but it generates a higher percentage of students who are happy they are at Penn (not resentful they are not at Harvard).</p>
<p>I'd rather trust my money to the advice of a tarot card reader. Shows how much I think of people with MBAs, regardless of how prestigious the school.</p>
<p>Ive worked in a MBA office before and to be honest most MBA students are dumb asses. Most of them are the big dumb frat boys who guzzle beer and have everything handed to them.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I don't understand what you are saying. If his tenure at the Fed preceded the period of record low interest rates, then how did it lay the foundation of the housing bubble, easy credit environment?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Just the fact that the guy was an economist at the Fed, an institution which I believe when all is said and done and the dust has settled from the current financial crisis, that history books will not be kind to the governmental institutions charged with overseeing the financial stability of the US. This includes the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission, etc. They were either largely asleep at the wheel (e.g. SEC) or made policy decisions which ultimately turned out disastrous (the Fed under Greenspan). I am willing to bet that many, many years from now when people look back upon this period (whether it turns out to be a really, really bad recession or even depression) and people ask, "what caused this crisis?" People will point to the Fed as the place where the current problems all began.</p>
<p>Look I know this dude we are talking about didn't actually set and sustain record low interest rates, but the fact that he starts railing against MBAs as if they were the main culprits of the current crises that we are in is not only completely false, but is rather ironic for a guy whose career is just about as close as you can get to the financial "system" as you can get.</p>
<p>To take a crude analogy, let's say that there are policymakers / lawmakers that one day decide to get rid or severely reduce police presence in a certain city (let's call them the Fed). Slowly but surely criminal activity begins picking up until the city is overrun by crime (now let's say the crimelords are these Ivy MBAs / CEOs). Of course we shouldn't be letting those criminals off the hook by any means, but let's ask the bigger question here, "why did all of these criminals start coming out of the woodwork?" -- "who is ultimately responsible for this situation?"</p>
<p>
[quote]
Ive worked in a MBA office before and to be honest most MBA students are dumb asses. Most of them are the big dumb frat boys who guzzle beer and have everything handed to them.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I've met many people who work in MBA offices -- and to be honest, those beer guzzling MBAs are downright geniuses compared to the people working in those MBA offices.</p>
<p>Im sure you can judge everybody. MBA students are about the most common thing around these days, maybe even more common than law students. So please, il keep my word they are dumb asses. I worked as a work study student years ago and compared to the Finance or Financial engineering students, the MBA students were flat out dumb.</p>
<p>Which b-school did u work for may I ask?</p>
<p>U of R. 10 char</p>
<p>Well that explains quite a lot. I doubt you'd be condemning all MBA students as beer guzzling idiots if you had spent a considerable time at Stanford, HBS, Wharton, etc. Seems to me you are basing some very broad conclusions based on a rather narrow sample group. Perhaps you might just stick to saying that U of R MBA students YOU met were beer guzzling idiots - by even then Id be willingto bet they are way smarter than you.</p>
<p>I'll trust my money with a monkey before I trust it with an MBA. If in the past three decades wall street hasn't learned to be more conservative, then I have no hope or faith in the clowns that are running the economy. Seems to me the right thing to do is to just let them go under.</p>
<p>What part of "don't spend money you don't have" don't you understand? Really. It's not that hard.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'll trust my money with a monkey before I trust it with an MBA.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yeah, give it to the monkey. My fund doesn't accept initial subscriptions under $1 million -- and the typical "ticket" is at least $10-20 million. Somehow I doubt you've got that kind of cash to throw around.</p>
<p>(p.s. we MADE money for our investors last year) ;)</p>
<p>At least I can sleep at night in peace knowing my money's not going to disappear overnight. You want me to entrust my money with the same people that ran Wall Street and the rest of the economy into the ground three times in the past decade? Sorry, not gonna happen.</p>
<p>As a counterpoint theprestige, neither did Madoff.</p>