could very well spell EXtreme disaster for the rest of us...
Hedge Funds run by 28 year old whiz kids who don't wish to do anything but turn money and turn it fast could very well make Gordon Gekko appear as a quaint example of how naive Greed was back in the day...
The attitude that Greed is Good can be traced back to "novelist" Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged, which was cited recently in another NYT article giving intellectual cover to the everybody is on their own so anything you do to get ahead is okay attitude amongst the rich and infamous. The book is the capitalist's Bible as it gives "ethical" justification to pursue the end by any means possible.
Of course greed has been with us since Cain bashed Able's head into mush in the very first chapter of that other Bible. But Rand continues to have clout amongst those who fear the common good and praise the individuals no matter what...
But effects of this new capitalism, which combines the cunning of Gekko, the ethically free world of Rand, the speed of modern technology and the ability to "invest" 24/7, is just now starting to percolate as the housing bubble grabs the headlines and moves the markets...
The article is all about these "dudes" who find no merit in matriculating in business school or, Alan Greenspan forbid, study for an MBA. My take is that without a well rounded education and armed only with a computer, access to the internet and way to lax regulation is all that is needed to make second by second transations...
Ethics, there are no ethics in Business school...
True, but at least you would learn to put things in perspective...
And god forbid these hucksters take into consideration anything but the bottom line...
And we have the 21st century model for riches...
Many of the brightest don’t covet a corner office at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. Instead, they’re happy to work at a little-known hedge fund run out of a two-room office in Greenwich, Conn., as long as they get a fat payday. The competition from alternative investment firms — private equity and hedge funds in particular — is driving up salaries of entry-level analysts at much larger banks. And top performers at the banks make so much money today that they don’t want to take two years off for business school, even if it’s a prestigious institution like the Wharton School or Harvard.
The new ranks of traders and high-octane number crunchers on Wall Street are also a breed apart from celebrated long-term investors like Warren E. Buffett and investment banking gurus like Felix G. Rohatyn. What sets the new crowd apart is the need for speed and a thirst for instant riches.
“With the growth of hedge funds, you’re getting a lot of really smart people who are getting paid a lot very young,” says Arjuna Rajasingham, 29, an analyst and a trader at a hedge fund in London. “I know it’s a bit of a short-term view, but it’s hard to walk away from something that’s going really well.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/business/16mba.html?em&ex=1190088000&en=71789963d94edd86&ei=5087%0A
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
