{"id":48,"date":"2011-02-03T15:07:20","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T20:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2011\/02\/03\/leading-wall-streeter-were-greedy\/"},"modified":"2011-02-03T15:07:20","modified_gmt":"2011-02-03T20:07:20","slug":"leading-wall-streeter-were-greedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2011\/02\/03\/leading-wall-streeter-were-greedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading Wall Streeter: We’re Greedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Gross is almost a saint on Wall Street. As the managing director of PIMCO bond funds, he\u2019s a great investor and usual suspect on CNBC. So when he says something like this<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

\n

As a profession we have failed miserably at our primary function \u2013 the efficient and productive allocation of capital [emphasis original]: <\/strong>The S&L debacle of the early 1980s, the Asian crisis, LTCM, dotcoms, subprimes, Lehman and the resurrection<\/u>, instead of the reformation<\/u>, of Wall Street, are major sins of the modern era of money. Hang your heads, moneychangers. And no, it is not yet time to move on, as many banking CEOs suggest. How can bond traders make ten, one hundred, one thousand times more money than an engineer or social worker given their dismal historical performance? Why is it that some of today\u2019s doctors are using food stamps while investment banking executives complain about millions of dollars in compensation that might be deferred in case of a future bailout? <\/p>\n

Financiers have lost their high ground and, if truth be told, we began to lose it a long time ago when we figured out that money was more than a medium of exchange or a poor substitute for a store of value. We figured out a turbocharged way to make money with<\/u> money and proclaimed ourselves geniuses in the process. Well, we\u2019re not. We may be categorized as \u201copportunists,\u201d to be generous, but society\u2019s \u201cparagons\u201d and a legitimate destination for a significant percentage of college graduates? Hardly. To paraphrase Paul Volcker, the only productive invention to come out of the banking industry over the past generation was the ATM.<\/p>\n

This country desperately requires a rebalancing of priorities. After readjusting the compensation scales via regulation and\/or free market common sense, America needs to anoint a new set of Mensans who can create something more than a cash machine and make this country competitive again in the global marketplace. We need to find a new economic Keynes or at least elect a chastened Congress that can take our structurally unemployed and give them a chance to be productive workers again. We must have a President whose idea of \u201ccentrist\u201d policy is not to hand out presents to the right and the left and then altruistically proclaim the benefits of bipartisanship. We need a President who does more than propose \u201cWin The Future\u201d at annual State of the Union addresses without policy follow-up. America requires more than a makeover or a facelift. It needs a heart transplant absent the contagious antibodies of money and finance filtering through the system. It needs a Congress that cannot be bought and sold by lobbyists on K Street, whose pockets in turn are stuffed with corporate and special interest group payola. Are record corporate profits a fair price for America\u2019s soul? A devil\u2019s bargain more than likely.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2026maybe somebody should listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Gross is almost a saint on Wall Street. As the managing director of PIMCO bond funds, he\u2019s a great investor and usual suspect on CNBC. So when he says something like this\u2026 As a profession we have failed miserably at our primary function \u2013 the efficient and productive allocation of capital [emphasis original]: The… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}