My main point was that the culture of speculation, while perhaps not invented in the United States, was taken to heights never before seen in history and we "exported" that around the world. While other countries were educating their kids to become engineers, scientists, doctors and mathematicians, we were cranking out MBA's to go work at Wall Street investment banks to flip arcane financial instruments that did nothing to add value to the real economy. Those privlieged few earned enormous compensation while most of the rest of the working population saw their incomes stagnate.
The U.S. has a lot to be proud of and the world owes us a debt of gratitude for many things, but the era of unbridled speculation that was pushed so zealously by our policymakers for so long (Rubin, Greenspan et al) has to stop. The brain power that went into creating the products and markets that formed this "casino economy" must now be refocused into delivering the more productive inventions and innovations that will form the foundation of stable, long-term growth and prosperity.
Paulson said in 2007 that the subprimes would be removed from the market and this would make everything even stronger !
ReplyDeleteBush pushed back the clock to pass it on to the next administration.
Who's to blame ?
Mike,
ReplyDeleteGosh that guy is terrible. He doesn't hear anything that you say. Even worse, I recall reading a WSJ report a few years back about how hedge funds and black-box trading outfits actually were aggressively recruiting away physics, engineering,comp-sci,and even
biology majors, in leu of MBA's because of quantitative skills.
Why don't you push warren's payroll tax holiday idea. Wouldn't that open some eye's at fox?
-jcmccutcheon
Mike, DR. Chu the energy sec. said that some of the brighest students have already switched their majors to solve the energy problem from finance {hedge funds}.Your right on!
ReplyDeleteGreat job!
ReplyDeleteI have met some of the econophysicists and it seemed like a lot of them were Russian and European.
ReplyDeleteThey bragged about taking their little quantum physics tools to do pricings for deregulated or brand new markets.
The system is inheritly flawed. How can anti-socialists be for giving their profits from investments but not for free healthcare to kids with cancer ?