Let's play a simple game.
What if I told you that there is a metaphysical place that exists in the universe and that place houses a fascinating machine? Furthermore, this machine has the potential to get you rich 99 out of 100 times. The only thing you needed to do was place a dollar into the machine and it would return $1.15. You would surely keep putting your money in that machine, wouldn't you? Well, what happens if you go to put your dollar in the machine one day and it doesn't return anything (not even your original dollar). What happens when this crazy little machine stops working?
Game Over (2009).
Showing posts with label Wall Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wall Street. Show all posts
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Excessive Greed
Greed - n. An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.
Much of America has a certain disdain for outrageous compensation packages that are reported in the media daily. I read the same newspapers as the rest of the general population, and can't even imagine what type of job would command a salary and bonus of $125 million. Perhaps that type of salary would be justifiable for the researcher or doctor that cured cancer, but certainly not the CEO of an Investment Bank, charged with allocating resources. Since we're playing the blame game, who else displayed greed?
When investors demanded and received returns that were uncharacteristic as a result of the financial engineering that was taking place on Wall Street, was that also not greed? Was it not greed, when that irresponsible family was willing to sign an ARM to enact their version of the "American Dream," and own a house that they could not reasonably afford? The point is, at every level there was greed, and once the train gathers enough steam it becomes uncontrollable - until the wheels fall off. I think it is safe to say, the wheels are falling off, if they haven't already.
There is a reason greed is considered one of the seven deadly sins, but it wasn't just pirates on Wall Street who were greedy as the media would love to have you believe.
Much of America has a certain disdain for outrageous compensation packages that are reported in the media daily. I read the same newspapers as the rest of the general population, and can't even imagine what type of job would command a salary and bonus of $125 million. Perhaps that type of salary would be justifiable for the researcher or doctor that cured cancer, but certainly not the CEO of an Investment Bank, charged with allocating resources. Since we're playing the blame game, who else displayed greed?
When investors demanded and received returns that were uncharacteristic as a result of the financial engineering that was taking place on Wall Street, was that also not greed? Was it not greed, when that irresponsible family was willing to sign an ARM to enact their version of the "American Dream," and own a house that they could not reasonably afford? The point is, at every level there was greed, and once the train gathers enough steam it becomes uncontrollable - until the wheels fall off. I think it is safe to say, the wheels are falling off, if they haven't already.
There is a reason greed is considered one of the seven deadly sins, but it wasn't just pirates on Wall Street who were greedy as the media would love to have you believe.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Higher Education
It's all so very 2009, save my Blogger account which was "the hottest thing ever" circa 2003. I have been having a dialog with a devoted reader via blogs. Sometimes she responds to my post, not in the comments section (like a normal person does), but with a post of her own and provokes me to do the same. Credit her with the Dog Rebuttal and the following post that I'm about to scribble down.
"What will you do if/when you lose your job?" -Nana/Aunt Peggy/Mom/Dad/every person that has been reading the ink being spilled in the papers/every individual that I meet at the bar and confess my career.
"I don't know." Then I continue on, "I'd probably have to leave the city (and despite all of the city bashing in this blog, there really is no great luster that beckons me to suburban Connecticut)."
Then, typically, the questioner will offer sage advice, "Have you thought about going back to business school?"
I have thought about business school. I have concluded, at this point in my life, it would not really benefit my career as much as it might have in the past. While I'm all for increasing one's human capital via higher education, I'm baffled by those that look to graduate school as a panacea. They look at it like a shelter from the harsh realities of a declining global economy.
There are a handful of reasons that I will not be going back to graduate school. One, I'm currently debt free, and I'm convinced that graduate school for business is really only worthwhile on Wall Street if you could get into a top-tier b-school, which will put me in debt of roughly $200K (not even considering the loss of my salary: opportunity cost). Two, over the past 35+ years we, as a collective country, have been manufacturing and exporting MBAs, so there is clearly a glutton of supply. I believe in the merits of graduate school for those in the medical profession or even law, where you go to graduate school to fine-tune a trade. Another deterrent, is the changing landscape of financial services jobs and the impending shift in compensation (read: the Money Tree on Wall Street is currently being chopped down), so upon graduating I'll have assumed a significant amount of debt and be earning a salary + bonus that just does not justify the exorbitant costs of business school. I currently work in "equity research" and am a product of a non-Ivy league school. What I'm trying to say is, people go back to graduate school to get a job that I currently have. It just seems unnecessarily redundant to incur the debt and land back at my current job or sign my life away to gain exposure to investment banking. Education is generally a positive, but the current costs are prohibitive for an individual with Wall Street ambitions, especially in an economy that we have not seen since the 1930s.
"What will you do if/when you lose your job?" -Nana/Aunt Peggy/Mom/Dad/every person that has been reading the ink being spilled in the papers/every individual that I meet at the bar and confess my career.
"I don't know." Then I continue on, "I'd probably have to leave the city (and despite all of the city bashing in this blog, there really is no great luster that beckons me to suburban Connecticut)."
Then, typically, the questioner will offer sage advice, "Have you thought about going back to business school?"
I have thought about business school. I have concluded, at this point in my life, it would not really benefit my career as much as it might have in the past. While I'm all for increasing one's human capital via higher education, I'm baffled by those that look to graduate school as a panacea. They look at it like a shelter from the harsh realities of a declining global economy.
There are a handful of reasons that I will not be going back to graduate school. One, I'm currently debt free, and I'm convinced that graduate school for business is really only worthwhile on Wall Street if you could get into a top-tier b-school, which will put me in debt of roughly $200K (not even considering the loss of my salary: opportunity cost). Two, over the past 35+ years we, as a collective country, have been manufacturing and exporting MBAs, so there is clearly a glutton of supply. I believe in the merits of graduate school for those in the medical profession or even law, where you go to graduate school to fine-tune a trade. Another deterrent, is the changing landscape of financial services jobs and the impending shift in compensation (read: the Money Tree on Wall Street is currently being chopped down), so upon graduating I'll have assumed a significant amount of debt and be earning a salary + bonus that just does not justify the exorbitant costs of business school. I currently work in "equity research" and am a product of a non-Ivy league school. What I'm trying to say is, people go back to graduate school to get a job that I currently have. It just seems unnecessarily redundant to incur the debt and land back at my current job or sign my life away to gain exposure to investment banking. Education is generally a positive, but the current costs are prohibitive for an individual with Wall Street ambitions, especially in an economy that we have not seen since the 1930s.
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