Lost in the 21st Century

Okay, I’ve published enough fluff for today.

Let’s get back to Politics….

This is one of the biggest issues associated with income inequality.  And it’s frequently overlooked.

The ridiculous salaries on Wall Street are creating a Brain Drain that draws young people, fresh out of College and many with large student loans, to go to Wall Street to try chase the dream to slave for ten years or so and retire billionaires at 40.

All these ridiculous, complex new financial instruments, like Credit Default Swaps, Hedge funds, etc. are really legalized gambling, market manipulation and frankly, fraud, created by super smart people to make a quick buck.  The old, staid Wall Street of yore would never have thought these things up or known what to do with them.

Face it, the guys who used to run Wall Street weren’t that smart…

Now young people who should be attracted to  jobs that might make Society better, be more fulfilling and create something positive are all running to Wall Street to try to think up the next ridiculously complex financial instrument to make themselves rich- no matter who it hurts or that it adds nothing to society.

Let’s get back to the basics:

1. Banks hold deposits and lend money to credit worthy people and companies-preferably in their local communities.  None should be “too big to fail.”  If they screw up, let them fail.
2. Wall Street trades stocks and bonds for people to invest in companies that survive by respecting their workers and the social contract, create]ing something we actually need or want in the world and don’t give all their money to a few top executives and CEO’s no matter how badly they perform.
3. Wall Street Investment Banks should invest in actual entities and not manipulative gambling instruments.
4. Young people need to be taught to explore their talents and try to meld them with a career that will give them a decent salary, give something back to the world and thus provide a sense of personal fulfillment.

It’s all out of whack….priorities, salaries, creativity and risk.

It shouldn’t  all be about a quick and easy buck-like today’s system encourages….

From Huffington Post:

But what if top students didn’t go to Wall Street? What if, rather than creating complex financial products that collapsed the global economy, they were building bridges and creating new technologies instead?

As America struggles to create jobs and get back on its feet after the recession — caused largely by the financial industry’s recklessness — the country is in desperate need of more entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists and other professionals, a complaint regularly made by non-Wall Street business leaders and members of both major political parties.

Lee Jackson is a senior economics major at Stanford who edits a financial newsletter called The Opportune Time. He has interned on Wall Street and plans to work in finance after graduation, but admits the profession needs reform.

“I think the emphasis is more on making money and making a profit, and there’s been less emphasis … on what the greater societal implications of that are,” he said, pointing to fields like law and medicine that focus on the needs of the client or patient and have outreach programs to help low-income individuals. During the debate over Wall Street reform, meanwhile, bank lobbyists fought a provision in the Dodd-Frank legislation that would require financial companies to operate in the best interests of their clients.

“Over the past few years in the mainstream American culture, the bad side of American finance has come out time and time again,” he added. “But my fear is that the good side of finance and the side that can help people save for retirement, build their own wealth and be able to support themselves [will be lost].”

Yet without a cultural shift and reforms that rein in the financial industry’s sky-high profits and salaries, a disproportionate number of the best and the brightest will continue to head to Wall Street.

“Our financial system remains out of whack in terms of regulation, compensation, and until our economy is stronger, it’s not surprising that young people will be attracted to the place where the money and jobs are,” Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senate candidate and creator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told The Huffington Post. “In a sense … it’s a demand problem, [as well as] the fact there is not enough demand in the rest of the economy. It’s both problems.”

via America’s ‘Brain Drain’: Best And Brightest College Grads Head For Wall Street.