WaPo: What I built — with government help

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-i-built--with-government-help/2012/08/17/ecc86b24-e885-11e1-936a-b801f1abab19_story.html

What I built — with government help

By James C. Roumell, Published: August 17

James C. Roumell founded Roumell Asset Management LLC.

snip//



I went to college with the help of Pell Grants and government loans. Twenty years ago I met Claiborne Pell and was able to thank the former Democratic senator from Rhode Island for introducing the Higher Education Act of 1965, which allowed me to go to college.

My business has been made possible by the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. These laws created practices and transparency that enabled a financial services industry to emerge. After the stock market collapse of 1929, the public rightly did not trust Wall Street and needed assurances that the industry would operate within a reliable set of rules.

Nothing in terms of “regulations” or “business uncertainty” has stopped me from investing capital for a return. In fact, the stability that government involvement brought to the capital markets over the past three years, evidenced by a 100 percent increase in the Standard and Poor’s 500-stock index since March 2009, probably enabled my business to survive. The federal government’s back-stopping of money market funds in the fall of 2008 ended, effectively in one day, what was turning into a 1930s-style bank run.

Of course, I worked hard. As a boy I delivered newspapers and cut grass. In high school I was a short-order cook, landscaper and factory worker. I entered the financial services industry in 1986, and in 1992 I struck out on my own with a new baby and little savings. I learned what a panic attack was, for sure.

I did work harder, and perhaps more imaginatively, than many colleagues. But does that mean I built it myself? Does it diminish my success to be grateful for the public investments that so clearly contributed to my success? Every successful person knows, and will admit if he is honest, that luck played a role in his good fortune.

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Let us have a real debate about the costs and benefits of government spending programs. The attitude that smugly denigrates the public sphere while applauding the private one is misguided.

[Doctor_J]

1. I am waiting for one person in Big Media to point out to Ryan

1. Your ancestors in the 1800's got rich off of public works projects
2. You received Social Security to go to college
3. You have, your entire adult life, lived off of taxpayer dollars
4. You voted for every single one of Bush's budget-busting initiatives

How dare you denigrate the government, you miserable hypocrite

[cr8tvlde]

2. Thanks to the NYC and the NDEA Government Funds back in the 60's

Neighborhood Youth Corps funded my high school job.

Two years of free (mostly) community college.

Two years of NDEA loans ... National Defense Education Act ... to graduate with BA. Each year I taught in a Title 1 school (disadvantaged/low income) and also same district I graduated from, 1/4 of my debt (at 3.9%) was retired.

I have always been grateful for the generous government programs without which it would have at least been much harder and taken longer.

So, that's a big part of why I'm a Democrat.