Replies to post #618003 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[brightness]

By "talented people" I did not mean those who made the ridiculous gambles . . . but people who actually do know what the heck they are doing and kids coming out of school with tons of student debt. Publicly traded companies will be quite unattractive to them if the pay scales are controlled by the government like in soviet countries used to be. They may even consider emigrating. It has nothing to do with love for their country or countrymen (soviet leaders pumped plenty of those empty exhultation into the air, to no avail); people do not want to be slaves.

[osprey]

<<"talented people are going to work for privately-held companies">>

That would be a joke if it wasn't a lie. There are many far more talented people in law, medicine, and academic and corporate R&D. I'd really like to see these clowns earn an MD, Ph.D., JD, etc. and then contribute something to the world besides greed and destruction.

Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all hedge funds are either BK or failing.

I've heard from insiders in WS that most of these guys aren't really all that smart. They are mostly the children of the old guard elites. They went to Ivy League schools where it is impossible to flunk out and got C's in easy courses. A classic example is a Yale graduate from Texas who won't be named who had a very high position in the oval office while New Rome burned.

At this point, it is now obvious that we would have been far better off letting all these banks fail and starting over. It would clear out all the dead wood, crooks, people who mistake a fancy office and title for competence, and let the real talented people have a shot at building genuinely well run and profitable companies. It might have been worse in the short term but long term, it would be better. That is what we did with the S&L crisis and the Resolution Trust Co. in the early 1990's. It was a difficult time, we got through it OK, and a huge success.