<p>Indeed – non-scientifically-trained who copied from the scientists and had no idea what they were doing.</p>
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<p>If a scientist creates an explosive meant for drilling into hillsides to build tunnels and underground shopping centres and someone copying the idea ends up demolishing a shopping centre instead, clearly the first guy was to blame, right?</p>
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<p>This is a cultural issue (indeed, where price cues fail and mislead). This is where Americans should take a cultural leaf from the East Asian tigers. </p>
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<p>anti-discrimination laws and encouraging subprime mortgage are quite two different things.</p>
<p>it’s like comparing wage discrimination laws (which I support) with the minimum wage (which I don’t support).</p>
<p>Financiers are already tied to the production of goods. They usually provide the capital. If you didn’t know, financiers have been around since the dawn of the Renaissance, and their role in business has increased many-fold since the Industrial Revolution in particular. So, of course they are directly tied with the production process. They can provide as much, or as little money as they want, and that in itself will have a direct impact on the rate of production of a certain good or service, for example.</p>
<p>What do you mean, “lab project”? The vagueness of your proposals is astounding. You have little clue on what you are talking about. You are applying terminology in places where it doesn’t quite belong. </p>
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<p>You are assuming too much that most finance majors were born with silver spoons in their mouths. Not everyone who majors in finance was born rich. Another logical fallacy shot down.</p>
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<p>True, but such precise experience you have mentioned isn’t exactly necessary to hone one’s decision-making skills and one’s appreciation for the future.</p>
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<p>Indeed we do, but not everyone is an entrepreneur. And you know ends up giving them the money to do what they need to do? The banks, like the ones on Wall Street that everyone loves to hate these days.</p>
<p>I know you are frustrated with finance majors not being truly engaged with their subject of study on an academic level like you are in your subject of study, but some of your arguments seem to be straying towards ad-hominum illogic.</p>
<p>i’m sure Poland would be the same slum without him. he came there for cheap labor, not to provide jobs or anything. this was kind of eeeh in the midst of the Cold War, if you catch my drift</p>
<p>so who did the phyics phd who invented this great financial product plan to market his invention to? other physics phds? no. to the general investing public. by your logic, these complex financial instruments could only be invested by other phds who understood what they were. </p>
<p>second, many of these complicated financial instruments were brilliant, in theory. but when put to practice, the physics phd realized that the market is not perfectly efficient and there are externalities at play. but these academics have no real grasp of reality, thinking their financial insturments will work just like they did in the models. and guess what, they didn’t. you pretty much argue that bankers have no long-term vision and that only academics should be allowed to enter the financial field. well guess what, academics would make the worst bankers because they are way too theoretical for their own good.</p>
<p>Why should you care about people’s motives in selecting a job? It’s not like you know them, in any way, shape, or form. Maybe they came from an underprivileged background and just want to be able to provide for their children in a way that their parents couldn’t. Or maybe they are just greedy. Either way, it’s THEIR decision to make, not yours</p>
<p>I was vague because the diversity of the type of science you can be interested in is pretty large. It could be an architectural / engineering project (an airplane engine, a computer processor), a basic research project (the identity of the central regulatory hormone that synchronises autonomous Circadian clocks), an organic synthesis project (a new more economical pathway to produce drug family X) etc. </p>
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<p>Correction: nearly everyone.</p>
<p>(I do respect those few who are of humble origins and have taken to finance.) </p>
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<p>Their classical role.</p>
<p>But do most finance kids today know anything about what kind of production they want to fund?</p>
<p>I am interested in finance because I wish eventually have the economic power to finance a certain type of productive economic activity.</p>
<p>In comparison, when I ask a finance kid what kind of productive economic activities he (or she) dreams of financing, I usually get confused responses. (Greatly respect those kids who <em>do</em> have some sort of economic vision, e.g. “I want to help finance the economic development of developing nations”. This thread is not about them.)</p>
<p>Well, at any rate, your proposals are too narrowly defined. Most finance problems are usually targeted at solving problems, like in the vein of: How should a company structure its funding in such a way that is efficient and does not waste capital in the long run?</p>
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<p>Regardless, I see your comment as an insult to the rest of us who are genuinely interested in the nuances of the subject. We are not all pigs, thank you. Of course, there are people in it for the money alone.</p>
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<p>No, we are not. But regardless, many great companies would not be what they are today had they not gotten the financing that they needed. Financiers give companies options on how to finance their operations, whether it be through loans, underwriting of IPOs, etc.</p>
<p>We are not interested in what we finance, but the manner in which we do it. That itself is a science of its own.</p>
<p>You make too many assumptions, sir. Not everyone on this earth will become a scientist. And not all scientists are necessarily working for the greater good, despite your lofty rhetoric.</p>
<p>Your esoteric aspirations of a noble-minded working class are unfounded and will most likely be unfulfilled. Not everyone is as altruistic as you seem to desire to be.</p>
<p>Jeez. I’m double-majoring in underwater basket-weaving / valley girl studies (concentrating in the use of the word “like” as a respiratory palliative), and before I could declare my major I had to sign a contract saying that I would never hold a job or contribute to the economy in any way. Compared to me, all those future investment bankers seem pretty good.</p>
<p>As far as I know, academics are quite forthright about the limitations of their models. They never hide the fact that they have created models, which are by definition simplified representations of the real world.</p>
<p>Take Nobel Laureate Robert Merton for example, “The mathematics of the models are precise, but the models are not, being only approximations to the complex real world.”</p>
<p>David X. Li devised a Gaussian copula function in 2000 that was subsequently misused and abused throughout the following eight years. Li himself never oversold his discovery, as he said “Very few people understand the essence of the model…The most dangerous part is when people believe everything coming out of it.” Those who understood were fully aware that it should not have been used the way it was used.</p>
<p>I agree that academics don’t necessarily make the best bankers, but I disagree that they “think their financial instruments will work just like they did in the models.” They know that their models are simplifications of reality.</p>
<p>No matter how you like it you <em>are</em> part of the system. You participate and consent to its social contract. There are ways to dissent from the social contract, but I don’t think you have undertaken any one of those measures.</p>
<p>Look I know we act all ghetto and gangster and all (I’m excluding the middle class kids who play it up), but we’re all just looking for our chance. </p>
<p>Seeing as how we face scarcity in our daily lives, I think we appreciate the importance of capital and production than most spoilt finance kids.</p>
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<p>If it takes x amount of managers to efficiently manage a project and more economic output would be attained if the nth person first became a worker under said project, then that nth person being a manager would be economically unproductive.</p>
<p>I think the same goes for financiers versus the producers of the direct economic output they finance.</p>
<p>It’s pretty hard to reach equilibrium in every industry worldwide at the same time. Saying that only X number of people are allowed to be managers in a certain company would be the sort of planning/regulation not practiced in most countries. Additionally, how would we be counting the effective managing done by a specific manager? Not all managers are hired to manage. Some could hold positions due to some courtesy involving a third party and that manager may only be manager only in title.</p>
<p>WuTang, I assume that you are aware that there is theoretically nothing preventing you from getting a degree in finance if you really wanted to.</p>
<p>What? That wasn’t my point at all. I was saying that people’s intentions are never as lofty as you seem to think they should be, no matter how poor or rich.</p>