10 Comments
Pretty building on campus exists for a reason
Dates set-ish for Manhattanville, something should happen somewhere possibly in Spring 2009
CU grad schools prefer if grad students take grad student classes, undergrads get fussy
Feast your eyes: 800 words on why the economic crisis is actually a good thing. Finally, no CU student will want to go into finance, and we can all just sit around talking about Plato all day, everyday, forever!
“Inky whirls reminiscent of jazz music”, art that has “more right to exist than actual people and things,” all in Dodge!
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10 Comments
@what are you on about.
1) It’s not a brain-drain; the efficient distribution of capital is key to the growth of businesses. If you don’t have a fluid lending environment and an efficient capital market, companies cannot raise money to grow and invest. Without growth and investment, businesses stagnate and new jobs are not created. R&D comes to a halt. Expansion to other countries ceases. “Very little value in the economy” just reflects your total lack of understanding about how the economy works, and how “Growth” actually happens. You need smart people working in this industry, and not the greedy idiots that currently populate the industry.
2) Financial services is extremely interesting if you understand what’s going on. Today, models to predict assets’ behavior are rooted in quantum physics, math, and computer science. Trading, structuring, and research involve a fairly close application of material you learn in the classroom. Just because you are ignorant, does not mean there isn’t an academic value to the financial services industry.
@... Financial services is a support function, like janitorial services.
The university couldn’t operate without janitors, but that doesn’t justify making the department head of the janitors the most highly paid employee in the university.
@Financial Services Involves more intellectual exercise than you will ever be capable of reproducing.
@... i have two problems with the financial services industry:
1) it serves as a brain drain. people leave industries and fields that actually produce tangible goods and scientific knowledge so that they can collect overinflated salaries for creating very little value in the economy.
2) lets face it, financial services is about as interesting as watching paint dry. as such, you end up with a lot of bored smart people who want to create things. what do they end up creating? schemes for creating market inefficiencies they can capitalize on by overcomplicating things. incredibly complex deals, contracts and instruments that are nearly impossible to regulate. in the process of doing so, they start to build hidden structural systemic risk into the market itself. yeah sure, you gained another 20 basis points above the benchmark, but what happens when the benchmark goes to hell?
lending is lending. it’s not rocket science. and in fact, trying to turn it into rocket science is a bad, bad idea.
@Hey Douchey What is Columbia’s hospital called again? Oh right, the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital. Philanthropy and Community Service is very prominent in securities firms, believe it or not.
@A+ in CC His article is about why society’s educated elite should forgo personal gain and instead devote themselves to furthering the greater good through public service. Sounds like the Republic to me.
@Great column http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/56303
CQA treasurer Learned Foote comes out in support of ROTC
@Gordon Gekko The author is obviously a disgruntled (future) humanities major, dealing with his own insecurity by taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others. What is more apparent than the immaturity of the piece however, is the author’s lack of knowledge regarding even basic economic principles.
Are you seriously claiming that the financial services industry in America has no social worth, and that this country’s great wealth is owed entirely to “paper-pushers” and “speculators”? Who do you think pays all of the taxes to finance the investments in infrastructure and education you discuss? Moreover, you talk about how Japan, South Korea, China and Western Europe made such good moves as compared to the United States, but i seem to recall that during the 1990’s Japan was in the midst of a 10 year recession, South Korea’s economy nearly collapsed in 1998 and Western Europe (especially Scandinavia) is likely to suffer from the credit crisis far more than America.
Additionally, you describe finance in America as being driven wholly by greed and short-term gratification, however i should remind you that it was the community activist types like ACORN who initially supported sub-prime mortgages as a way to increase home ownership among the poor.
I realize that the author of this article was probably recently inspired by a thorough reading of Plato’s Republic, but unfortunately that is not how the world actually works. Maybe a few more semesters of college (at least until Adam Smith comes up in CC) will cause the author to base his opinions more on reality.
@No offense, but you don’t understand The Republic if you think that’s what inspired the article. This doesn’t change the fact that the article is a bit douche-y. People have different interests. Live and let live.
@... that humanities kid writing about the economy has his head up so far up his ass that i can’t even see his shoulders any more
i’m an econ major not planning to go into finance for my own reasons but i know a lot of people who want to go into that field… some have genuine interest while others need to do it since they are less fortunate and have loans to pay off… some might be greedy but that’s not the main reason…
that self-deluded kid might want to take a stroll outside of his ivory tower and interact with people once in a while