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I know guys like Tagg Romney. Personally, professionally. And that's how I know that 1. it does take a different sort of individual to work 80 hours a week in a high-stress environment, 2. 244 million under management makes him a tiny, tiny fish in the ocean of global capital management, and 3. it sucks not having a paycheck that isn't tied to your performance. See, that's the rub when you're a money manager, 70% of your compensation generally comes from your bonus -- taxed at a marginal 50% rate by the way--which is dependent on you beating the rest of the world. Oh, there's also a 50% washout rate, in general, in this field.

Huh, the numbers are the same in my field (freelance and blind marketed graphic design) for hours, stress, and washout. Interesting though that 244 million would be considered incomprehensible in this field. That's the kind of number that would seem made up. That golden parachute is pretty valuable, it doesn't need to be made out of Jesus' own beard hairs to be a lot of money and people in financial fields don't actually work particularly hard when their average work week is put up against most other careers with non standard work weeks (IE not 9 to 5). The pay is dramatically better though.

Similarly if he does well it will grow, but that will be because he's an adept and adaptable money manager, not because of a Ha'va'd education and Daddy Mitt. Money management is actually the worse possible analog for the silver-spoon trust fund baby 'success' story because it ultimately boils down to individual performance-driven results.

Having followed the financial crisis pretty closely it really doesn't appear to work that way. About the only response to the JP Morgan 2 billion dollar magic trick last week was a shareholder lawsuit. Without that any removals would be accompanied by generous severances and that's just about the most extreme example of a failure from investment available.

As to social welfare? The Republican/Democrat divide isn't one about no social welfare vs. some, it's a divide over 'enough' vs. 'more. All the glorious social construct models that continuously point to 'more'? None of them can stand up to the real world fact that California is losing money/jobs/population to Texas, that Greece had one of the narrowest income gaps globally prior to the recession, and that the Pilgrims wouldn't have survived Plymouth if they hadn't gone from communal redistribution to free-market.

Or that Scandinavia beats us in virtually every quality of life metric possible? How about the fact that every lasiz faire economy in history eventually moved to a social capitalist model or failed? How about that German Economy eh? Pretty existant isn't it? Pretending that the argument about social wellfare is about enough/more is pretty abysmally ignorant of what should be plainly visible from right outside your ivory towers window. The sheer volume of people within this electorate that want massive "unspecified cuts", massive "unspecified overhauls" and massive "redistribution" shoots any idea that all people want is a continuation of policy right in its high horse.

Having followed the financial crisis pretty closely it really doesn't appear to work that way. About the only response to the JP Morgan 2 billion dollar magic trick last week was a shareholder lawsuit. Without that any removals would be accompanied by generous severances and that's just about the most extreme example of a failure from investment available.

Well yes, the financial industry is by far the most corrupt thing in the USA at the moment. Even the slaps on the wrist are more like slapping them with a small stack of $1000 notes and then letting them keep the money.

Melissia wrote:

sourclams wrote:This doesn't change that fact that fund management is easily among the most corrupt, regulation-ignroing industries on the planet

I think I fixed that for you.

Although I should just remove "amongst the most" from that instead, but PMCs get rather close.

Aside from the stuff you say with no practical knowledge of, experience in, or expertise about, Madoff and Corzine were both Democrats. Resolve that for me, please. After all, the OP is about the Republican-Democrat 'virtue' divide.

sourclams wrote:

Melissia wrote:

sourclams wrote:This doesn't change that fact that fund management is easily among the most corrupt, regulation-ignroing industries on the planet

I think I fixed that for you.

Although I should just remove "amongst the most" from that instead, but PMCs get rather close.

Aside from the stuff you say with no practical knowledge of, experience in, or expertise about, Madoff and Corzine were both Democrats. Resolve that for me, please. After all, the OP is about the Republican-Democrat 'virtue' divide.

It's about the conceptual divide in rhetoric, no one is going to readily deny that the upper echelons of politics are a money game. The system is built to elevate those who can purchase exposure. Don't equate the rhetorics of a movement with select corrupt participants. One could as easily point out conservative gays, Raegans tax hikes, or John Edwards lack of recognizably human soul. It's an equivocation.

sourclams wrote: All the glorious social construct models that continuously point to 'more'? None of them can stand up to the real world fact that California is losing money/jobs/population to Texas, that Greece had one of the narrowest income gaps globally prior to the recession, and that the Pilgrims wouldn't have survived Plymouth if they hadn't gone from communal redistribution to free-market.

And yet Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, and a number of other European countries expend more on social welfare as a percentage of GDP than the US while also exhibiting healthy economies.

sourclams wrote:Aside from the stuff you say with no practical knowledge of, experience in, or expertise about, Madoff and Corzine were both Democrats. Resolve that for me, please.

A simple resolution is "it's irrelevant", given that my point was that the industry itself is widely corrupt.

For example:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/05/short-selling-litigation

This sort of corruption is common practice in the industry, as is the attempts to hide all evidence of it.

The lowest income gaps are shared by Scandinavia and Japan. They achieve this in different ways though, the scandinavians with a generous welfare state, the japanese by having very little difference between the highest and lowest wages. The benefits from a much more equal society are immense.

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

ShumaGorath wrote:Huh, the numbers are the same in my field (freelance and blind marketed graphic design) for stress, and washout. Interesting though that 244 million would be considered incomprehensible in this field. That's the kind of number that would seem made up. That golden parachute is pretty valuable, it doesn't need to be made out of Jesus' own beard hairs to be a lot of money and people in financial fields don't actually work particularly hard when their average work week is put up against most other careers with non standard work weeks (IE not 9 to 5). The pay is dramatically better though.

This is basically what I consider quantitative evidence that 'you don't get it'.

244 million is his assets under management. He's going to have to make that amount perform as well/better than common indices (if he's a beta manager) or generate proprietary trades himself (if alpha).

His office will generate fees of probably 1-3% of the total funds under management, of which they'll pay their SG&A. That's a few million dollars annually, divied up between all staff, weighted most heavily toward the traders. Base salaries for traders are probably around 100k, then bonus.

Having followed the financial crisis pretty closely it really doesn't appear to work that way. About the only response to the JP Morgan 2 billion dollar magic trick last week was a shareholder lawsuit. Without that any removals would be accompanied by generous severances and that's just about the most extreme example of a failure from investment available.

The CIO resigned, the trader responsible resigned, and we do not know the status of their severance, and Jamie Dimon himself has said 'heads will roll' if impropriety is discovered. Investigations are still very much ongoing. Bottom line, we don't know what the fallout is because it hasn't resolved yet. It's quite possible that for a firm of that size, with that magnitude of positions, $2 billion can be lost purely around Basis risk, which is something few people outside of JPMorgan will know the intricacies of, and I doubt you even understand at a rudimentary level.

Or that Scandinavia beats us in virtually every quality of life metric possible?

Tiny, culturally, and geographically homogeneous country. /totally_the_same

Pretending that the argument about social wellfare is about enough/more is pretty abysmally ignorant of what should be plainly visible from right outside your ivory towers window. The sheer volume of people within this electorate that want massive "unspecified cuts", massive "unspecified overhauls" and massive "redistribution" shoots any idea that all people want is a continuation of policy right in its high horse.

I'm ridiculously far removed from the ivory tower. My role literally 'is' commerce. The 'sheer volume of people' in this 47% of the electorate that plan on voting Democratic, like you, don't even understand what they're trying to scapegoat. And, further, the two most visible examples of blatant corruption and financial failure of our generation have, thus far, both been Democrats.


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dæl wrote:The lowest income gaps are shared by Scandinavia and Japan. They achieve this in different ways though, the scandinavians with a generous welfare state, the japanese by having very little difference between the highest and lowest wages. The benefits from a much more equal society are immense.

Scandinavia is geopolitically insignificant, given that they are a tiny, homogeneous, remote, and stable region.

Japan has been in recession for 30 years.

And we've been in a recession for at least eleven.

Melissia wrote:

Having followed the financial crisis pretty closely it really doesn't appear to work that way. About the only response to the JP Morgan 2 billion dollar magic trick last week was a shareholder lawsuit. Without that any removals would be accompanied by generous severances and that's just about the most extreme example of a failure from investment available.

Well yes, the financial industry is by far the most corrupt thing in the USA at the moment. Even the slaps on the wrist are more like slapping them with a small stack of $1000 notes and then letting them keep the money.

Why is that corrupt? They made bad trades. They were fired. Life goes on. Meanwhile the Company made $18bazillion in the same quarter. thats capitalism. Thats how its supposed to work. Don't start getting preachy when someone in business actually loses money for poor decisioning.


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dogma wrote:

sourclams wrote: All the glorious social construct models that continuously point to 'more'? None of them can stand up to the real world fact that California is losing money/jobs/population to Texas, that Greece had one of the narrowest income gaps globally prior to the recession, and that the Pilgrims wouldn't have survived Plymouth if they hadn't gone from communal redistribution to free-market.

And yet Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, and a number of other European countries expend more on social welfare as a percentage of GDP than the US while also exhibiting healthy economies.

The Scandinavian countries also get taxed at an incredibly high rate, get a massive % of their income from the North Sea oil deposits (you know evil energy), and aren't spending wads defending Europe from the USSR (despite there being no USSR).

Frazzled wrote:Why is that corrupt. They made bad trades. They were fired.

And given massive corporate executive severance packages which they themselves wrote and signed. So not only did they fail, they wrote their own paycheck knowing that they'd fail, and gave themselves a ton of money.

Equality of opportunity my ass.

And let's face it, big companies are opposed to capitalism and free markets just as much as, if not more than, labor unions are. Subsidies, protective tariffs, lying to the customer, doing as little as possible, etc. Competition is anathema to them.

dogma wrote:

sourclams wrote: All the glorious social construct models that continuously point to 'more'? None of them can stand up to the real world fact that California is losing money/jobs/population to Texas, that Greece had one of the narrowest income gaps globally prior to the recession, and that the Pilgrims wouldn't have survived Plymouth if they hadn't gone from communal redistribution to free-market.

And yet Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, and a number of other European countries expend more on social welfare as a percentage of GDP than the US while also exhibiting healthy economies.

Germany "works" because Germans actually "work"; they have relatively low unit-labor costs and maintain incredible levels of productivity in spite of a 50% tax wedge. Really it's impressive.

The empirical evidence would suggest that California is either massively inefficient, refuses to "work", or has some other environmental factor that makes them 'not Germany'. Whatever that is, Texas must have it in droves.

Melissia wrote:And let's face it, big companies are opposed to capitalism and free markets just as much as, if not more than, labor unions are. Subsidies, protective tariffs, lying to the customer, doing as little as possible, etc. Competition is anathema to them.

That's true.

If only we had a government that would refuse to help them stamp out competition.

A man can dream...

Melissia wrote:And we've been in a recession for at least eleven.

The US recession ended in 2011.

Since then my income is up 25% and you still don't have meaningful employment. I'm going to trust my knowledge and experiential base on 'the economy' (not to mention metrics like, oh, the market, gas prices, and unemployment) over your belligerent blame-makings.

sourclams wrote:The US recession ended in 2011.

Not according to the Republicans.

Also, stop pulling stuff out of your backside and assuming it applies to me. I've studied economics from both a business and an economist's standpoint, as well as having helped run a business.

sourclams wrote:The 'sheer volume of people' in this 47% of the electorate that plan on voting Democratic, like you, don't even understand what they're trying to scapegoat.

I agree, except I'd add that most Republicans don't understand either. I worked in financial services for about a decade. One of my takeaways was that the common complaints about the industry tend to be about the wrong stuff. There's no shortage of issues there, but they aren't the things that the public tends to get riled up about. Or what affects the small investor most.

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Why is that corrupt. They made bad trades. They were fired.

And given massive corporate executive severance packages which they themselves wrote and signed. So not only did they fail, they wrote their own paycheck knowing that they'd fail, and gave themselves a ton of money.

Equality of opportunity my ass.

And let's face it, big companies are opposed to capitalism and free markets just as much as, if not more than, labor unions are. Subsidies, protective tariffs, lying to the customer, doing as little as possible, etc. Competition is anathema to them.

And none of that is illegal or unethical. If you don't like their management practices, don't own their stock.

Frazzled wrote:And none of that is illegal or unethical

Illegal no.

Unethical? Hell yse.

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:And none of that is illegal or unethical

Illegal no.

Unethical? Hell yse.

Not unethical. They made bad trades.
Either you just have youre fingers in your ears screaming "I can't hear you!" or you enjoy posting without a working knowledge of the subject.

This is basically what I consider quantitative evidence that 'you don't get it'.

244 million is his assets under management. He's going to have to make that amount perform as well/better than common indices (if he's a beta manager) or generate proprietary trades himself (if alpha).

His office will generate fees of probably 1-3% of the total funds under management, of which they'll pay their SG&A. That's a few million dollars annually, divied up between all staff, weighted most heavily toward the traders. Base salaries for traders are probably around 100k, then bonus.

You're thinking qualitatively, but oh well.

Base salaries for traders are probably around 100k, then bonus.

No, I understand it quite well.

The CIO resigned, the trader responsible resigned, and we do not know the status of their severance, and Jamie Dimon himself has said 'heads will roll' if impropriety is discovered. Investigations are still very much ongoing. Bottom line, we don't know what the fallout is because it hasn't resolved yet. It's quite possible that for a firm of that size, with that magnitude of positions, $2 billion can be lost purely around Basis risk, which is something few people outside of JPMorgan will know the intricacies of, and I doubt you even understand at a rudimentary level.

And I'm sure you're right down here in the ditches with me, especially considering an apparent lack of perspective on the "rolling heads" that followed the last wave of "Improprieties" during the last series of major banking scandals. Were you there arguing that we can't enforce laws because these companies need to maintain their expert managerial workforce back then? I have the memory and intelligence of a goldfish though, so I'll bow down to your "expert experiential experience" when talking about a company you don't work at and are similarly in the dark about.

Tiny, culturally, and geographically homogeneous country. /totally_the_same

Which is why I also brought up Germany. Hell, do you want to take this the other direction? Want to start listing countries that have significantly fewer socialist leanings than we do? Hows central Africa doing these days?

I'm ridiculously far removed from the ivory tower. My role literally 'is' commerce. The 'sheer volume of people' in this 47% of the electorate that plan on voting Democratic, like you, don't even understand what they're trying to scapegoat. And, further, the two most visible examples of blatant corruption and financial failure of our generation have, thus far, both been Democrats.

I'm pretty sure that ivory towers are generally manned by people whose jobs are commerce. We don't actually have wizards anymore, those things are expensive to build.

As for the most visible levels of corruption, one would think that the republican leaning establishment at the top of Lehman Brothers or the oil funded coke and hooker parties republican lobbyists kept getting invited to would be up there. But hey, lets not forget the blinders! It wouldn't be a discussion about finance and politics without them.

Frazzled wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:And none of that is illegal or unethical

Illegal no.

Unethical? Hell yse.

Not unethical. They made bad trades.

.., they set up the situation so that the company will pay enormous amounts of money them whether they fail or succeed, and then proceed to fail. Consistently.

And you expect me to believe that this is ethical?

Frazzled wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:And none of that is illegal or unethical

Illegal no.

Unethical? Hell yse.

Not unethical. They made bad trades.
Either you just have youre fingers in your ears screaming "I can't hear you!" or you enjoy posting without a working knowledge of the subject.

A strong case can be made that it's unethical for a private bank to engage in large scale investment, but without the specifics of every trade that went wrong we can't say for sure if they engaged in unethical levels of risk. JP Morgan isn't really a bank anymore anyway, there are no realistic or accurate classifications for that kind of corporate establishment. Either way it probably shouldn't exist at all.

Frazzled wrote:
The Scandinavian countries also get taxed at an incredibly high rate, get a massive % of their income from the North Sea oil deposits (you know evil energy), and aren't spending wads defending Europe from the USSR (despite there being no USSR).

Germany and Belgium aren't Scandinavian countries, and both actually have tax rates on par with those states. Further, only Norway derives a significant amount of its GDP from oil. Sweden and Denmark have very diverse economies.

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:And none of that is illegal or unethical

Illegal no.

Unethical? Hell yse.

Not unethical. They made bad trades.

.., they set up the situation so that the company will pay enormous amounts of money them whether they fail or succeed, and then proceed to fail. Consistently.

And you expect me to believe that this is ethical?

Thats incorrect. They set up vast trades of vast quantities. JPM has a history of profitably trading, but they screwed the pooch. Thats called business.

If I buy and sell stocks as a day trader and I screw up and buy high when the market goes low I lose money and the other guy makes the money. Thats business. Thats what trading and hedging is. As noted someone(s) else made $2bn in profit.


You do know what hedging is right? You do admit that companies lose money...right? You do admit that sometimes companies can in fact lose money without it being some sort of evil criminal conspiracy by the Jews er what do you call it now Wall Street right?


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ShumaGorath wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:And none of that is illegal or unethical

Illegal no.

Unethical? Hell yse.

Not unethical. They made bad trades.
Either you just have youre fingers in your ears screaming "I can't hear you!" or you enjoy posting without a working knowledge of the subject.

A strong case can be made that it's unethical for a private bank to engage in large scale investment, but without the specifics of every trade that went wrong we can't say for sure if they engaged in unethical levels of risk. JP Morgan isn't really a bank anymore anyway, there are no realistic or accurate classifications for that kind of corporate establishment. Either way it probably shouldn't exist at all.

No, it can't. You can make the case that certain institutions shouldn't be involved in trading from a risk return basis, but there's no ethical issue here. Whats with you people and the whole "OOOOO everyone's a criminallllllOOOOHHH!"


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dogma wrote:

Frazzled wrote:
The Scandinavian countries also get taxed at an incredibly high rate, get a massive % of their income from the North Sea oil deposits (you know evil energy), and aren't spending wads defending Europe from the USSR (despite there being no USSR).

Germany and Belgium aren't Scandinavian countries, and both actually have tax rates on par with those states. Further, only Norway derives a significant amount of its GDP from oil. Sweden and Denmark have very diverse economies.

I wasn't referring to Germany and Belgium.

Frazzled wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:And none of that is illegal or unethical

Illegal no.

Unethical? Hell yse.

Not unethical. They made bad trades.

.., they set up the situation so that the company will pay enormous amounts of money them whether they fail or succeed, and then proceed to fail. Consistently.

And you expect me to believe that this is ethical?

Thats incorrect. They set up vast trades of vast quantities. JPM has a history of profitably trading, but they screwed the pooch. Thats called business.

If I buy and sell stocks as a day trader and I screw up and buy high when the market goes low I lose money and the other guy makes the money. Thats business. Thats what trading and hedging is. As noted someone(s) else made $2bn in profit.


You do know what hedging is right? You do admit that companies lose money...right? You do admit that sometimes companies can in fact lose money without it being some sort of evil criminal conspiracy by the Jews er what do you call it now Wall Street right?

That is not what Melissia is talking about, she is talking about the practice that leads managers to award themselves VERY large severance pays when they are fired for their incompetence being unethical, not the practices that led to their termination of employment.

Managers can't award themselves large severances. If they can, thats bad management control and you shouldn't invest in them. Their bosses/BOD can but again it goes back to the fact that if you don't like the management don't invest in the company.

No, it can't. You can make the case that certain institutions shouldn't be involved in trading from a risk return basis, but there's no ethical issue here. Whats with you people and the whole "OOOOO everyone's a criminallllllOOOOHHH!"

Stop equating ethics and legality. They aren't the same thing. It's lazy and paints you as someone not to be taken seriously.

ShumaGorath wrote:

No, it can't. You can make the case that certain institutions shouldn't be involved in trading from a risk return basis, but there's no ethical issue here. Whats with you people and the whole "OOOOO everyone's a criminallllllOOOOHHH!"

Stop equating ethics and legality. They aren't the same thing.

True that of course that wasn't your argument.

Frazzled wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

No, it can't. You can make the case that certain institutions shouldn't be involved in trading from a risk return basis, but there's no ethical issue here. Whats with you people and the whole "OOOOO everyone's a criminallllllOOOOHHH!"

Stop equating ethics and legality. They aren't the same thing.

True that of course that wasn't your argument.

No, my argument was that we don't really know the ethics of the situation and that arguments can (and very often are) made that its unethical for private banking institutions to engage in high risk trading. You should of been able to interpret that (since I said it explicitly), but once again you've proven that you have no actual intention of ever engaging in these discussions in anything but a partisan and rather schoolyard manner.

You never said why banks are unethical to trade. Unethical implies moral wrongness to it. It could be inprudent on a risk/return basis. It could be inprudent because government guarantees of deposits exposes the taxpayer inordinantly and therefore they have an interest. Neither of those are ethical concepts.