Genius Class is What Ails Wall Street
In a nutshell, geniuses are supposed to be scientists, mathematicians, and brain surgeons. Instead, the Ph.Ds from MIT, Wharton School of Business, and all the other places we peasants cannot get into unless we cheat on our nuclear physics tests or get in as a science experiment, regurgitate cookie cutter top brains who go to all the "right firms." This all means the geniuses from the best places "flood the zone." It just so happens that the schools everyone knows are the creme de la creme are also the best places for turning out well educated criminals. Our geniuses find early on that there ain't much money in discovering where dinosaurs shit or how in the fuck cancers keep showing up in rats. If you want to make big money before you're 107 you have to become stock hustlers, market manipulators, or financial criminals. Why not work in other places? It goes without saying that all the really smart guys cannot stand those ickey jobs where they might actually sweat---an affliction reserved for athletes and prison inmates-- or run the risk of a "loser" label should he develop lower class callouses on manicured delicate hands. Me? Out in the Bering Sea pulling crab pots in the freezing cold? Work on oil rigs out in the bay somewhere? You must be smoking something. An American genius will never be found doing any job that might require physicality. And the Army? Holy fuck, you can actually get shot doing stupid shit like that. The army is for guys who have to get their Ph.Ds from state universities. If I want to get shot at I'll just rob banks.
But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do which is win at something. The smartest guy in the room types demonstrate their masculinity by making more money than anyone else, and end up wanting money more than going to Heaven (if there is something stupid like Heaven). The American geniuses are just women with penises. Period. So as all the smart guys start doing the same thing at different financial companies,where they all think up what they believe are proprietary ways to "get an edge." That edge is just like the super star athlete who needs that something extra to stay on top. But since all the bright boys go to the same colleges and universities, use the same text books, and take the same tests, we end up with financial markets on the same steroids. "Investment" vehicles so complicated that no regulator can understand what's in them or what the geniuses are doing til it's done. Only after the crime and all us suckers end up with what is left of our dicks dangling over a urinal at a Salvation Army Shelter does somebody in our government act. We men are by nature hyper competitive. We live to win. Win and let everyone else know it. "He who has the most toys, wins," and it makes no sense to win unless the score is posted on the giant screen out in center field. Scores include trophy wives and mistresses, hot babes who will positively not hang around unless they can enjoy the perks of hyper genius multi-millionaires. After all one cannot be hot looking unless one drives a Rolls and you can't order a bunch of maids around if you are dressed in shit from some boutique not located in Paris.
The new Master Race has hot cars, ten expensive homes, yachts; and most importantly, corporations with their names on them. But on the top rung of ladder of conspicuous consumption, the must have for any man who has it "made," is to have the best piece of ass in the world. And the Best Piece of Ass in the World has to look like she is, else the competition will think YOU are losing it and can't even get good pussy. So the Best Piece of Ass in the World has to take care of herself----and that takes money. Who is the better fuck, a babe who uses silk tampons or some tramp who buys the regular shit at a discount drug store?
How to get all this? And how to be sure you can keep getting all this? Innovation in business, stupid. How to innovate? Why with a phalanx of arcane financial instruments that you can sell to the suckers (suckers are you saps who work your butts off so you can send your kids to college and shit).
Which comes to an obvious solution to the current financial situations. Limit salaries and commissions. You ain't gunna work for shit money, so the geniuses will return to the chemistry labs and medical research and leave making money to us "C" students, guys who can't think of new things to sell to the suckers. Me? I start the Memorial Day Weekend hoping to find some loser who will buy my 6,000 shares of Enron stock so I can go back to my day job driving a bus.
4 comments:
You're almost correct. Instead of putting limits on income, Just make those types of financial trades illegal. Whats the point of all those new trades if nobody including the regulators can understand them. Tell banks to go back to being banks and tell all those investing other peoples money what the rules are. Make it simple for the regulators to keep track of whats going on and give serious jail time to violators. Then we can get back to pruducing goods and services and creating real wealth in the country.
You can't make them illegal. Many are traded off exchanges anyway, but what would you make illegal? The problem isn't the trades it's the composition of the instruments being traded. NOBODY knows what is in a unit that has been hedged and hedged and hedged. The banking "crises" is still around because many of the instruments are so complex they cannot be analyzed.
Put the ratings agencys people in jail. How can an instument that no one understands be rated? It can't. Sue Moodys, etc., into oblivion. Once they are unrated, no one will touch them.
Well, when I said to make the trades illegal, my intent was to criticize the Clinton admin for the repeal of Glass Stegal in 1998. If we reinstate that legislation, then banks will have more regulation and and the regulators wont have so much trouble with keeping track of what is going on. Also, the government wont be expected to bail out private transactions that are traded off exchanges because banks and insurance companies and brokerage firms wont be involved. What the hedge fund managers and investors do to each other in the privacy of their bedrooms is no concern of ours.
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