Too Big to Fail
#firstworldproblems With Real Consequences
On the Newsstand:Wall Street
Sleeping at Zuccotti: Images of American Pluralism at Occupy Wall Street
The HPR reports from the epicenter of the #Occupy movement.
In Defense of Occupy
Economic inequality is something we should all be talking about. Occupy Wall Street is making it nearly unavoidable, and that's a good thing.
#OccupyBoston: “This Is What Democracy Looks Like”
The #OccupyWallStreet movement comes to Boston. The HPR reports on the enigmatic protest.
Occupation With No End?
The Occupation of Wall Street might not have any concrete goals, but that shouldn't detract from its importance.
Orszag, Progressivism, and Public Sector Pay
Sam makes some fair points, but I don’t think Wilkinson was saying that anyone in general can get rich on Wall Street now that Washington is so powerful. What he actually said is a little different: [I]t really isn’t the Citizens United decision that’s about to make Peter Orszag a minor Midas. It’s the vast power of a handful of Washington players, ... Read More
Peter Orszag, Co-Optation, and Progressivism
Check out Will Wilkinson’s post on Peter Orszag’s disappointing decision to cash in at Citigroup. First Wilkinson suggests that this sort of co-optation of government officials by market forces is a fatal flaw in progressivism. “[M]arket institutions find ways to use the government’s regulatory and insurer-of-last-resort functions as countervailing forces against their competitors and, in the end, against the very ... Read More
House Democrats Vote to Raise Taxes
Just before its Memorial Day recess, the House passed a bill that, according to The New York Times, would raise the taxes that investment managers pay on carried interest, just at the moment new long-term investment is most needed. General executive partners of long-term investment partnerships, including investments in real estate, venture capital, private equity, and other investments, are paid ... Read More
The Quants Revisited
I reviewed Scott Patterson’s book The Quants for our summer issue, and I’d like to expand upon my conclusion. I wrote: The professors are the new barons of Wall Street, and they appear poised to accrue even more power. They are like “civil engineers … after a bridge collapse,” Patterson writes: they’re to blame, but they’re also needed for the ... Read More
Divining the Progress of the Climate Bill
Since the recent explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the politics of the climate bill have become more complicated, according to the New York Times. The newly perceived safety risks make it difficult to include increasing offshore drilling as part of any new policy. The Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill is being pitched as an energy independence and climate ... Read More
Absolutely Not Fabulous
Goldman Sachs has been making headlines (again) after charges were filed by the SEC alleging that the company sold a financial product whose components were decided on in part by Paulson & Co., a company who made bets in a hedge fund that the product would see losses, without disclosing this to investors and thereby creating a conflict of interest. ... Read More
Corruption is Hardly a Third-World Phenomenon
Recent news that BHP Billiton and Hewlett Packard are now under serious investigation for bribery should serve as a reminder that corruption at the highest level is not reserved for developing countries. Although whilte-collar crime in Wall Street has been well-known for a long time and, indeed, bankers and financiers have never had a worse reputation, we tend to reserve ... Read More
Why do Harvard kids head to Wall Street? Because they want to, that’s why
Ezra Klein has a balanced, sympathetic interview with an anonymous Harvard grad (history and political philosophy, my kind of guy/girl) who worked for Goldman Sachs after being recruited at Harvard. The key paragraph, the one that allows Ezra to suggest that the Ivy-Wall St. pipeline is not all about following the money, is this one: Investment banking was never something ... Read More
