Superb Comment On Hellasious Blog

[yaakov]

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=41...442771190638523

What's so scary about this recession is the realization that the limb we've been sawing upon since 1970 is finally snapping. The "permabears" have been pointing to this for decades. Now the time has come.

On these pages a few days ago, I suggested to Hellasious that the challenge isn't debt, it's not greed, it's not monoline rating fraud. It's the gradual decline in highly productive, innovative behavior that has occurred here in the U.S. over the past 30 years.

I recently read that MIT grads now go to Wall Street when they graduate. The financial sector moves wealth, it doesn't create wealth. MIT grads used to go to engineering firms, product development, materials basic research...somewhere where actual wealth was created. Why has MIT given up on making things??

That's a horrific mis-allocation of resources, and it's emblematic of our society's core problem.

Our minds are figuratively sitting on couches, instead of in the lab struggling to solve the core problems of our day.

Reversing this recent trend away from production is more political than technical, as Hellasious states. The solution might be top-down, in the form of a leader that's charismatic and technical (e.g. understands how wealth is actually created), or more likely will occur in the form of a bottom-up cultural shift toward creativity and production (actually doing something).

I'm advocating a tectonic shift from Consumerism to Producerism. Inflation, deflation, falling profits, falling real incomes, etc. are all solved if we vastly increase the rate of wealth creation, and the only way to do that is through innovation.

[Methinkshe]

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=41...442771190638523

For years I have been horrified that thousands of Science and Engineering and Maths graduates have ended up in City jobs purely because of the salaries available in the City in comparison with the pittance that is offered by industry or academia. We are already seeing the results - a shortage of Science and Maths teachers, those who should be training the next generation. And once the next generation is untaught in Science and Maths, there is no-one to teach succeeding generations and the spiral is downwards all the way. Nor is it the fault of industry or academia that they cannot afford to pay City style salaries - the blame lies fairly and squarely with the Financial Services Industry that has been allowed, unchecked, to make obscene amounts of money - most of it of the "funny money" variety, i.e. magicked out of thin air through the creation of ever more fanciful debt intruments - SIVs etc.

Now that the whole debt/derivative pyramid is in danger of collapsing, is it too late to return to sanity and sensible salaries within the FS sector, thus releasing the scientists and engineers and mathematicians to Industry and Academia where they rightly belong? I think it might be. India and China are churning out scientists and mathematicians from their universities by the hundreds of thousands. Unless a proportion of them can be persuaded to teach in our third-world schools, Science and Maths (and hence innovation and industry) are history in the UK and, by the sound of it, in the US, too. The balance of power has shifted from west to east in more ways than one, i.e. not only currency reserves - they also have intellectual wealth, a fast disappearing commodity in the decadent, consumerist west.

[marko]

For years I have been horrified that thousands of Science and Engineering and Maths graduates have ended up in City jobs purely because of the salaries available in the City in comparison with the pittance that is offered by industry or academia. We are already seeing the results - a shortage of Science and Maths teachers, those who should be training the next generation. And once the next generation is untaught in Science and Maths, there is no-one to teach succeeding generations and the spiral is downwards all the way. Nor is it the fault of industry or academia that they cannot afford to pay City style salaries - the blame lies fairly and squarely with the Financial Services Industry that has been allowed, unchecked, to make obscene amounts of money - most of it of the "funny money" variety, i.e. magicked out of thin air through the creation of ever more fanciful debt intruments - SIVs etc.

Now that the whole debt/derivative pyramid is in danger of collapsing, is it too late to return to sanity and sensible salaries within the FS sector, thus releasing the scientists and engineers and mathematicians to Industry and Academia where they rightly belong? I think it might be. India and China are churning out scientists and mathematicians from their universities by the hundreds of thousands. Unless a proportion of them can be persuaded to teach in our third-world schools, Science and Maths (and hence innovation and industry) are history in the UK and, by the sound of it, in the US, too. The balance of power has shifted from west to east in more ways than one, i.e. not only currency reserves - they also have intellectual wealth, a fast disappearing commodity in the decadent, consumerist west.

As one of the diminishing section of science/engineering graduates who actually went into engineering, I view the maelstrom of money in the financial sector with extreme suspicion. To my mind it represents more than anything the decline of the West - the greedy, fast, decadent and above all EASY creation of fake wealth as opposed to the slow, difficult, painstaking creation of real wealth through actually altering the real world.

To anyone on here who still labours under the illusion that b_w_ankers in the city are some sort of super-smart race of phenomenally hard workers, let me disabuse you of that notion: designing and building something is MUCH more difficult than the creation of funny money.

At the end of the day finance is a lot easier and more well paid, and therefore it is little wonder that it is more attractive to your average greedy sod. Unfortunately, it means that the science and engineering base in this country has been disappearing rapidly over the last decade. The financial sector is the snake eating it's own tail.

Bankers - see that fancy car you drive that you bought to compensate for your small d1ck...someone built it. When you phone Hong Kong on your mobile, you are using an object that sits in your pocket and allows you to talk to anyone else on the planet who has a similar object - it might as well be magic FFS. To enable this, a satellite that took literally hundreds of man years of effort sits quietly 36,000km overhead, piping your inane babble across continents. When you pop a pill for your 'stress-related' ulcer (Beluga Caviar and champagne related ulcer more like ), it is the result of years of clinical trials. When you go home to your luxury townhouse in Belgravia, it represents a tradition of architecture that stretches back through history. Even the multitude of the most inane objects that surround you in your home represent a wealth of technical and engineering knowledge, of smelting and firing and glazing and turning and curing and stitching and setting and distillation.....

All this represents a degree of effort and skill you in your pathetic job could never match. Your role was to allocate money efficiently to help facilitate all this activity - you are a facilitator of productive work, THAT is YOUR ROLE in society. Not inventing ways to convince the rest of us that you have created billions of pounds of wealth. Not hampering all this activity with your myopic greed.

Personally I think the financial sector has just signed it's own death-warrant with this recent farce; the rest of us won't tolerate it as it currently stands for much longer.

Edited January 27, 2008 by marko

[marko]

Duplicate post

Edited January 27, 2008 by marko

[Methinkshe]

As one of the diminishing section of science/engineering graduates who actually went into engineering, I view the maelstrom of money in the financial sector with extreme suspicion. To my mind it represents more than anything the decline of the West - the greedy, fast, decadent and above all EASY creation of fake wealth as opposed to the slow, difficult, painstaking creation of real wealth through actually altering the real world.

To anyone on here who still labours under the illusion that b_w_ankers in the city are some sort of super-smart race of phenomenally hard workers, let me disabuse you of that notion: designing and building something is MUCH more difficult than the creation of funny money.

At the end of the day finance is a lot easier and more well paid, and therefore it is little wonder that it is more attractive to your average greedy sod. Unfortunately, it means that the science and engineering base in this country has been disappearing rapidly over the last decade. The financial sector is the snake eating it's own tail.

Bankers - see that fancy car you drive that you bought to compensate for your small d1ck...someone built it. When you phone Hong Kong on your mobile, you are using an object that sits in your pocket and allows you to talk to anyone else on the planet who has a similar object - it might as well be magic FFS. To enable this, a satellite that took literally hundreds of many years of effort sits quietly 36,000km overhead, piping your inane babble across continents. When you pop a pill for your 'stress-related' ulcer (Beluga Caviar and champagne related ulcer more like ), it is the result of years of clinical trials. When you go home to your luxury townhouse in Belgravia, it represents a tradition of architecture that stretches back through history. Even the multitude of the most inane objects that surround you in your home represent a wealth of technical and engineering knowledge, of smelting and firing and glazing and turning and curing and stitching and setting and distillation.....

All this represents a degree of effort and skill you in your pathetic job could never match. Your role was to allocate money efficiently to help facilitate all this activity - you are a facilitator of productive work, THAT is YOUR ROLE in society. Not inventing ways to convince the rest of us that you have created billions of pounds of wealth. Not hampering all this activity with your myopic greed.

Personally I think the financial sector has just signed it's own death-warrant with this recent farce; the rest of us won't tolerate it as it currently stands for much longer.

Well said. I agree 100%.

[CrashedOutAndBurned]

As one of the diminishing section of science/engineering graduates who actually went into engineering, I view the maelstrom of money in the financial sector with extreme suspicion. To my mind it represents more than anything the decline of the West - the greedy, fast, decadent and above all EASY creation of fake wealth as opposed to the slow, difficult, painstaking creation of real wealth through actually altering the real world.

A noted scientist realised what the problems were back in the 20s.

Check out Wealth Virtual Wealth and Debt by Frederick Soddy, a forgotten classic.

http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/wvwd/

[Injin]

Cancers grow until they kill the host.

That is all that is happening right now to us.

[marko]

Cancers grow until they kill the host.

That is all that is happening right now to us.

Or the cancer is cut out.

Seriously though, I have nothing against the role of finance in the big scheme of things. Finance is a way to allocate money for investment and consumption...and banks have done this in the past, as was their role.

Recently though they have morphed into something wholly different. State-sponsored gambling...a way to profit from the stupidity of others, making obscene amounts of money through deception. Pushing credit cards and cheap credit for consumption not productive investment.

The financial sector has just become a perversion. Take hedges and derivatives for example. Options were originally devised AFAIK to enable grain producers to purchase a put against their grain prices to ensure that if there was a bad harvest they weren't wiped out - it was insurance and helped reduce risk. Wonderful - a good idea, with a laudable goal. Now see what they have become; a way to access markets with huge leverage, to gamble in other words.

[sossij]

As one of the diminishing section of science/engineering graduates who actually went into engineering, I view the maelstrom of money in the financial sector with extreme suspicion. To my mind it represents more than anything the decline of the West - the greedy, fast, decadent and above all EASY creation of fake wealth as opposed to the slow, difficult, painstaking creation of real wealth through actually altering the real world.

To anyone on here who still labours under the illusion that b_w_ankers in the city are some sort of super-smart race of phenomenally hard workers, let me disabuse you of that notion: designing and building something is MUCH more difficult than the creation of funny money.

At the end of the day finance is a lot easier and more well paid, and therefore it is little wonder that it is more attractive to your average greedy sod. Unfortunately, it means that the science and engineering base in this country has been disappearing rapidly over the last decade. The financial sector is the snake eating it's own tail.

Bankers - see that fancy car you drive that you bought to compensate for your small d1ck...someone built it. When you phone Hong Kong on your mobile, you are using an object that sits in your pocket and allows you to talk to anyone else on the planet who has a similar object - it might as well be magic FFS. To enable this, a satellite that took literally hundreds of many years of effort sits quietly 36,000km overhead, piping your inane babble across continents. When you pop a pill for your 'stress-related' ulcer (Beluga Caviar and champagne related ulcer more like ), it is the result of years of clinical trials. When you go home to your luxury townhouse in Belgravia, it represents a tradition of architecture that stretches back through history. Even the multitude of the most inane objects that surround you in your home represent a wealth of technical and engineering knowledge, of smelting and firing and glazing and turning and curing and stitching and setting and distillation.....

All this represents a degree of effort and skill you in your pathetic job could never match. Your role was to allocate money efficiently to help facilitate all this activity - you are a facilitator of productive work, THAT is YOUR ROLE in society. Not inventing ways to convince the rest of us that you have created billions of pounds of wealth. Not hampering all this activity with your myopic greed.

Personally I think the financial sector has just signed it's own death-warrant with this recent farce; the rest of us won't tolerate it as it currently stands for much longer.

Top post! So eloquently put. As a fellow scientist I completely agree. Another poster on here said something long the lines that we are facing our own "lost generation" due to all the physicists, engineers and mathematicians who have been devoured by the financial services industry. I thought that was a very well made point. Pis$ing about in The City has not increased the scientific capital of this country by one iota. Rather it looks like the sidelining the very people needed by a vibrant, innovative manufacturing economy will cost us dearly.

[Bloo Loo]

Or the cancer is cut out.

Seriously though, I have nothing against the role of finance in the big scheme of things. Finance is a way to allocate money for investment and consumption...and banks have done this in the past, as was their role.

Recently though they have morphed into something wholly different. State-sponsored gambling...a way to profit from the stupidity of others, making obscene amounts of money through deception. Pushing credit cards and cheap credit for consumption not productive investment.

The financial sector has just become a perversion. Take hedges and derivatives for example. Options were originally devised AFAIK to enable grain producers to purchase a put against their grain prices to ensure that if there was a bad harvest they weren't wiped out - it was insurance and helped reduce risk. Wonderful - a good idea, with a laudable goal. Now see what they have become; a way to access markets with huge leverage, to gamble in other words.

The banks would argue the reverse, that the enabling of credit has allowed the growth of real business in the world, without that credit the spending and hence production would be less.

[sossij]

The banks would argue the reverse, that the enabling of credit has allowed the growth of real business in the world, without that credit the spending and hence production would be less.

The trouble is their 'enabling of credit' has been indiscriminate and, at best, poorly allocated.

[Xeonzinc]

On these pages a few days ago, I suggested to Hellasious that the challenge isn't debt, it's not greed, it's not monoline rating fraud. It's the gradual decline in highly productive, innovative behavior that has occurred here in the U.S. over the past 30 years.

I recently read that MIT grads now go to Wall Street when they graduate. The financial sector moves wealth, it doesn't create wealth. MIT grads used to go to engineering firms, product development, materials basic research...somewhere where actual wealth was created. Why has MIT given up on making things??

That's a horrific mis-allocation of resources, and it's emblematic of our society's core problem.

Being an undergraduate at one of the top Science/Technology Universities in the UK (Imperial College) I can tell you it is very similar here. Last year just under 25% of graduates from my course in employment went into banking/finance (increasing year on year), compared to 7% going into education(decreasing year on year). This trend is mirrored across almost all the other courses here (exl medicine for obvious reasons).

Although I don't think totally a case of the Banks simply taking away all the graduates who would normally continue into research of one form or another, many people come to study Science as simply a way to get into banking and would have little interest in any science based career. The problem lies mainly in the people who are being attracted to these university degrees. Also in the fact that during the interviews for applicants, stating you are interested in going into banking and finance is not seen as a bad thing and you will still be earned a place instead someone with marginally worse A-levels, who actually wanted a scientific career. Therefore we have at least another 4-5 years worth of graduates who are on a whole more interest in the city than any practical use of their education.

That's assuming anything is done to change the trend, although the amount of money financial institutions spend on lectures and 'networking opportunity's' here(which we seem to get emailed about every other week) is unlikely to stop anytime soon. Thereby making it the easy option to pursue for anyone who is undecided about what they want to go into.

[marko]

The banks would argue the reverse, that the enabling of credit has allowed the growth of real business in the world, without that credit the spending and hence production would be less.

I don't have a problem with debt - but I think it should be debt for productive investment. I don't think debt-fueled consumption gets society anywhere. If bankers think debt-fueled consumption is so wonderful, why don't they do it themselves? i.e. why aren't they all hocked up to the eyeballs? Oh sorry I forgot, because they are COINING it from getting everyone else into debt.

Give me a break.

They only REAL way society gets wealthier is through improvements in productivity - efficiency improvements in manufacturing, new processes, etc. Banks can facilitate this through making sure investments are made in the right places, but anything else is just a mirage in my opinion. Your credit-based consumption is fine in the short-term, as it allows reality to be suspended. But now the bubble has burst, reality is reasserting itself....the bankers having already received their bonuses or course.

Edited January 27, 2008 by marko

[Injin]

Or the cancer is cut out.

Seriously though, I have nothing against the role of finance in the big scheme of things. Finance is a way to allocate money for investment and consumption...and banks have done this in the past, as was their role.

Recently though they have morphed into something wholly different. State-sponsored gambling...a way to profit from the stupidity of others, making obscene amounts of money through deception. Pushing credit cards and cheap credit for consumption not productive investment.

The financial sector has just become a perversion. Take hedges and derivatives for example. Options were originally devised AFAIK to enable grain producers to purchase a put against their grain prices to ensure that if there was a bad harvest they weren't wiped out - it was insurance and helped reduce risk. Wonderful - a good idea, with a laudable goal. Now see what they have become; a way to access markets with huge leverage, to gamble in other words.

It's not finance.

It's the state.

Or, more accurately the idea that people's values, needs and desires can be mandated, centrally planned and coercively set. The primary way that they do this is through control of, dictation of what is and taxation of the money supply.

We have no idea what money should be. None. Because a relatively small bunch of crooks are making everyone use their otherwise paper to trade with at gunpoint. All price, demand and supply feedback is ruined because they are in the way of the market, and this has inevitably lead to disaster after disaster.

This current disaster is the end of fiat in the west, a project that was started in 1929 as a way out for what should have then been the death of the banking sector. Instead they cut a deal with conmen, crooks and killers to enslave everyone else. It's worked well for them, given them enormous amonts of power and control over everyone else and now it's over. It was due to die soon in any event, the practical limits of paper currency in a world of home computing and printing advances every 3-4 months will soon be breached.

The general perception is that this is a BAD THING but really, it's not. It is freedom for the masses from a system of control not one in 100,000 ever even knew about. There will be a brief downturn and then a massive flourishing of human potential the like of which has rarely been seen....or a new dark ages....one or the other.

[Bloo Loo]

I don't have a problem with debt - but I think it should be debt for productive investment. I don't think debt-fueled consumption gets society anywhere. If bankers think debt-fueled consumption is so wonderful, why don't they do it themselves? i.e. why aren't they all hocked up to the eyeballs? Oh sorry I forgot, because they are COINING it from getting everyone else into debt.

Give me a break.

They only REAL way society gets wealthier is through improvements in productivity - efficiency improvements in manufacturing, new processes, etc. Banks can facilitate this through making sure investments are made in the right places, but anything else is just a mirage in my opinion. Your credit-based consumption is fine in the short-term, as it allows reality to be suspended. But now the bubble has burst, reality is reasserting itself....the bankers having already received their bonuses or course.

Well, I think its their Belief that its credit that enables business to inovate and sell products, they see the cure to the current problems is to get everybody borrowing again.

They see as evidence, the recessions and depressions of the last century as times when things were "Bad" and the cure was always to increase spending.

They do this by reducing interest rates to discourage saving and encourage borrowing.

They are doing it again, evidence the deafening calls for LOWER INTEREST RATES.

Stupid lendin is going to come back. Either that or the market will say NO.

[Methinkshe]

Stupid lendin is going to come back. Either that or the market will say NO.

I know that you are of late convinced that stupid lending will come back. But I have to disagree. As you put it, the market WILL say no. There's been a tipping point, a turning point, a paradigm shift, call it what you will, that will rein in silly lending for at least a generation. As I said in another thread, what has become KNOWN through seeing the results of stupid lending, cannot be UNKNOWN, at least, not within the current generation, and will therefore dictate the price of risk for many years to come. It wouldn't matter if the banks were awash with cash (though I don't see that happening in the near future) they still would not return to the daft lending practices that have epitomised the past ten years. No individual would dare to break new ground and run ahead of, or against, the new herd thinking - risk aversion. And that's what would be required.

[Bloo Loo]

I know that you are of late convinced that stupid lending will come back. But I have to disagree. As you put it, the market WILL say no. There's been a tipping point, a turning point, a paradigm shift, call it what you will, that will rein in silly lending for at least a generation. As I said in another thread, what has become KNOWN through seeing the results of stupid lending, cannot be UNKNOWN, at least, not within the current generation, and will therefore dictate the price of risk for many years to come. It wouldn't matter if the banks were awash with cash (though I don't see that happening in the near future) they still would not return to the daft lending practices that have epitomised the past ten years. No individual would dare to break new ground and run ahead of, or against, the new herd thinking - risk aversion. And that's what would be required.

Thanks for that.

I would add that I am not CONVINCED that stupid lending will come back ( although it will if not regulated at some time in the future).

I feel that there is still an appetite amongst many people for the party to continue.

I think we are at a stage where if a miracle in banking occurs SOON, that sentiment has not sufficiently turned to prevent a slip back to last June attitudes to lending and borrowing.

Even if it does, it cant last and the inevitable will happen. Of that I AM certain

[HovelinHove]

When I finished my Ph.D. in Chemistry I got offered two jobs on the same day. The first was with Nomura, to join a programme they had for post grad students that if you stuck with it would make you a millionaire (according to the head of international markets anyway). The other job I was offered was to join a research team setting up a new branch of chemistry at Pfizer's research lab in Sandwich (an amazing facility, totally world class). I took the latter, more noble cause...then jacked it all in 6 months later because research is fu(king boring. You have to be a ceratin type, and I do admire those who stick with it and produce drugs/inventions that better man's existance, just wasn't for me. I would love to be a teacher, and pass on my genuine passion for science, but apart from the crap pay, I really couldn't cope with the huge volumes of beuracracy, and the discipline issues that plague teachers lives now. Personally i would be quite happy to see all those (unts that work in the city herded into a field in dover and driven off the edge of a cliff...they, along with the politicians they own, have destroyed our nation...they have produced no wealth, nothing of value at all.

[vfr]

For years I have been horrified that thousands of Science and Engineering and Maths graduates have ended up in City jobs purely because of the salaries available in the City in comparison with the pittance that is offered by industry or academia. We are already seeing the results - a shortage of Science and Maths teachers, those who should be training the next generation. And once the next generation is untaught in Science and Maths, there is no-one to teach succeeding generations and the spiral is downwards all the way. Nor is it the fault of industry or academia that they cannot afford to pay City style salaries - the blame lies fairly and squarely with the Financial Services Industry that has been allowed, unchecked, to make obscene amounts of money - most of it of the "funny money" variety, i.e. magicked out of thin air through the creation of ever more fanciful debt intruments - SIVs etc.

Now that the whole debt/derivative pyramid is in danger of collapsing, is it too late to return to sanity and sensible salaries within the FS sector, thus releasing the scientists and engineers and mathematicians to Industry and Academia where they rightly belong? I think it might be. India and China are churning out scientists and mathematicians from their universities by the hundreds of thousands. Unless a proportion of them can be persuaded to teach in our third-world schools, Science and Maths (and hence innovation and industry) are history in the UK and, by the sound of it, in the US, too. The balance of power has shifted from west to east in more ways than one, i.e. not only currency reserves - they also have intellectual wealth, a fast disappearing commodity in the decadent, consumerist west.

or in recruitment pimping other graduates.

[twarde]

Look at the competition from China in just one high tech business

At the end of Dec. 2007, Huawei has over 68,000 employees, of whom 48% are dedicated to R&D. Huawei's global R&D centers are located in Bangalore in India, Silicon Valley and Dallas in USA, Stockholm in Sweden and Moscow in Russia in addition to those in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Chengdu in China.

[Bloo Loo]

Look at the competition from China in just one high tech business

At the end of Dec. 2007, Huawei has over 68,000 employees, of whom 48% are dedicated to R&D. Huawei's global R&D centers are located in Bangalore in India, Silicon Valley and Dallas in USA, Stockholm in Sweden and Moscow in Russia in addition to those in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Chengdu in China.

go on, name one chinese invention ( recent- not fireworks and ancient stuff)

[twarde]

go on, name one chinese invention ( recent- not fireworks and ancient stuff)

It's not about inventions. It's all about high value high tech manufacturing. The basic research may well continue in western universities, but the Asian companies have the engineers to turn that knowledge into expensive, sellable products. Where is the UK's computer, telecoms even TV manufacturing ? Gone - now made in the far east.

[insidetrack]

Some people just won't "get it" until the Chinese Atlantic fleet enforces its right to an air exclusion zone over Southern England.

[Bloo Loo]

It's not about inventions. It's all about high value high tech manufacturing. The basic research may well continue in western universities, but the Asian companies have the engineers to turn that knowledge into expensive, sellable products. Where is the UK's computer, telecoms even TV manufacturing ? Gone - now made in the far east.

not with chinese money, it was western money and Companies that created the chinese miracle. Its western Companies that went there, set up manufacturing, took advantage of cheap labour. All they do is copy. They copy our processes, they copy our financial methods, they tax like we do, they Police a lot harder.

OUr Banks are in china earning a packet, and they are being policed effectively by the chinese as they are OVERLENDING there as well.

[The Masked Tulip]

I think those MIT grads are all over on the News of the World site today posting about why they are leaving the country!