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Do people really buy the "it's because bankers are evil" line? Yes, I think that's actually a common sentiment.

Rod 18y ago
It's funny that just 2 or 3 years ago, bankers were rock stars. I lost the count of how many friends and acquaintances left Science & Engineering to try a career as investment bankers... and failed miserably. Bankers deserve neither admiration (their job is not particularly noble), nor everyone's hatred (the economic crisis is not entirely their fault).
- jwilliams 18y ago
  True - But the same happened in the dotcom boom. There were some pretty terrible coders around. A lot of bad entrepreneurs lost people a lot of money on some bad ideas. I'd disagree that being a banker can't be noble... but you'd really need to meet/know a counterexample to argue that point to it's end conclusion - and that's not necessarily a simple thing to do at this point in history.
  - Rod 18y ago
    The one good thing about crises such as the dotcom boom and the current Wall Street meltdown is that they weed out the mercenaries. The coders who stayed in the business after the crash were the ones who did it for the passion, not for the buck. I would say the same applies to bankers, but I never met one banker who admitted to love his job. I have met traders who loved their jobs. But not bankers. Unless by "banker" we mean anyone who works at a bank, not just investment bankers... I would argue that bankers are not particularly noble, but I am not bashing them either. Guys like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen and others became rich because of their companies' IPOs, which were carried out by bankers. Not all is black & white, right?
deleted 18y ago
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mechanical_fish 18y ago
Read this article, which I just found: http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-28/news/what-cooked-the-world-s-economy/2 http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-28/news/what-cooked-the-... An excerpt: About $2 trillion in credit derivatives in 1989 jumped to $8 trillion in 1994 and skyrocketed to $100 trillion in 2002. Last year, the Bank for International Settlements, a consortium of the world's central banks based in Basel (the Fed chair, Ben Bernanke, sits on its board), reported the gross value of these commitments at $596 trillion. Some are due, and some will mature soon. Typically, they involve contracts of five years or less... Warren Buffett branded derivatives the "financial weapons of mass destruction." Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who organized the bailout of New York a generation ago, called them "financial hydrogen bombs." If, in an old issue of Superman, Lex Luthor had plotted to issue six hundred trillion dollars worth of baseless assets -- an amount approximately equal to the economic output of the entire world for an entire decade [1] -- and stir them together with the world's actual assets, everyone would have agreed that it was over the top. Who could believe that the planet would fall for an outrageous plot like that, even in a comic book? So, yeah. It seems reasonable to suggest that this behavior is, to first order, essentially evil. [2] --- [1] Global GDP in 2008: $70.65 trillion US dollars. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy) [2] This phrase is one of my favorites. I've borrowed it from a colloquium speaker at the Cornell physics department, who used it to refer to Edward Teller. I don't remember if Hans Bethe (Teller's former colleague on the Manhattan Project, later turned arms-control advocate) was in the audience at the time, or whether he laughed. My seat wasn't that good.

Rod 18y ago

It's funny that just 2 or 3 years ago, bankers were rock stars. I lost the count of how many friends and acquaintances left Science & Engineering to try a career as investment bankers... and failed miserably. Bankers deserve neither admiration (their job is not particularly noble), nor everyone's hatred (the economic crisis is not entirely their fault).

jwilliams 18y ago
True - But the same happened in the dotcom boom. There were some pretty terrible coders around. A lot of bad entrepreneurs lost people a lot of money on some bad ideas. I'd disagree that being a banker can't be noble... but you'd really need to meet/know a counterexample to argue that point to it's end conclusion - and that's not necessarily a simple thing to do at this point in history.
- Rod 18y ago
  The one good thing about crises such as the dotcom boom and the current Wall Street meltdown is that they weed out the mercenaries. The coders who stayed in the business after the crash were the ones who did it for the passion, not for the buck. I would say the same applies to bankers, but I never met one banker who admitted to love his job. I have met traders who loved their jobs. But not bankers. Unless by "banker" we mean anyone who works at a bank, not just investment bankers... I would argue that bankers are not particularly noble, but I am not bashing them either. Guys like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen and others became rich because of their companies' IPOs, which were carried out by bankers. Not all is black & white, right?

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

mechanical_fish 18y ago

Read this article, which I just found: http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-28/news/what-cooked-the-world-s-economy/2 http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-28/news/what-cooked-the-... An excerpt: About $2 trillion in credit derivatives in 1989 jumped to $8 trillion in 1994 and skyrocketed to $100 trillion in 2002. Last year, the Bank for International Settlements, a consortium of the world's central banks based in Basel (the Fed chair, Ben Bernanke, sits on its board), reported the gross value of these commitments at $596 trillion. Some are due, and some will mature soon. Typically, they involve contracts of five years or less... Warren Buffett branded derivatives the "financial weapons of mass destruction." Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who organized the bailout of New York a generation ago, called them "financial hydrogen bombs." If, in an old issue of Superman, Lex Luthor had plotted to issue six hundred trillion dollars worth of baseless assets -- an amount approximately equal to the economic output of the entire world for an entire decade [1] -- and stir them together with the world's actual assets, everyone would have agreed that it was over the top. Who could believe that the planet would fall for an outrageous plot like that, even in a comic book? So, yeah. It seems reasonable to suggest that this behavior is, to first order, essentially evil. [2] --- [1] Global GDP in 2008: $70.65 trillion US dollars. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy) [2] This phrase is one of my favorites. I've borrowed it from a colloquium speaker at the Cornell physics department, who used it to refer to Edward Teller. I don't remember if Hans Bethe (Teller's former colleague on the Manhattan Project, later turned arms-control advocate) was in the audience at the time, or whether he laughed. My seat wasn't that good.