I don’t believe there is anything wrong with a desire for money for it’s own sake. Except I do agree that there is a proliferation of people who do just as you say - make money by moving money around a spreadsheet or make the rules for moving money around a spreadsheet. At least in the old days, a greedy steel or railroad tycoon was actually building something.
Basically what happened with the economy is someone figured out they could give loans to anyone, package and sell off the loans so they didn’t have to worry if they got repaid or not and made a ton of short-term money. At least with the dot-coms, someone was actually trying to create a business (and people forget, for all the vaporware businesses, there are a lot that are still around and sold legitimate products)
I make my living as a trader at a small trading firm. Some of my trading is day trading, some of it longer term. The only guaranteed pay I get is a very small monthly draw against my forward profit. Thus, I eat what I kill. If I make $25k, $100k, or $1 million in a year it is 100% due to my decisions to buy or sell from other market participants at mutually agreed upon prices. Other than being market participants in the same markets, I have basically nothing in common with Wall St. traders. I have no connections to inside information, no commissions, no banking/client relationships, no end of year bonus, no incentive to take excessive risk, etc. All I do all day, every day is provide liquidity to the market. Would you consider me to “have business doing” what I do?
This post is not meant to be hostile or defensive. I am honestly interested in your perspective on this.
Like the dot-coms, there isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with creating a business of packaging and reselling mortages into RMBS and CDOs, if done correctly. Clearly the idea of doing business over the internet didn’t go away either. But it needs to be done correctly. If you make a bunch of bad loans to people who won’t be able to pay them, then misjudge the risk involved and provide an incorrect rating and then have financial institutions start buying them wholesale without due dilligance, it’s a recipe for disaster. Trom - I can’t speak specifically what you do or your firm. A friend of mine did work for a daytrading firm for a number of years, ultimately with disasterous results when the dot-com bubble burst, and described his place as “a bunch of dumb Jersey meathead Guidos”. What I am specifically thinking about is how back in the 90s, you had all these articles about people quitting their regular jobs and setting up trading desks so they can make tons of money. More recently, you have all these shows about speculators with no idea what they are doing, taking out huge loans so they can “Flip That House” and make huge profits. I tend to think anything once it becomes the subject of reality shows and lifestyle articles has become totally overhyped.
