Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 4:54 pm Post subject: Good to see you too!
Hi Uriel hi Elaine.
Since all asset prices are declining my friends say they don't think it's time to brave into any new investments. (Cowards!!)
How's old China? What else can China be engaged in? Of course my country is busy picking out people's kidney stones. Has it been reported that a British minister drank a glass of Chinese-made liquid milk when he was attending a conference in China, and days later he had to have an operation to pick out his stone?! It's funny! What an example of black humor! There's only one group of people who can compete Chinese dairy farmers as far as greed is concerned: Wall Street capitalists!
Location: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula
Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 5:53 pm Post subject: Re: Good to see you too!
Patrix wrote:
There's only one group of people who can compete Chinese dairy farmers as far as greed is concerned: Wall Street capitalists!
However, the difference between Chinese dairy farmers and Wall Street capitalists is that the Wall Street capitalists can walk off with millions and continue to wreak their havoc again and again.
Hmmm, one typical example of the principal-agent problem--the management of a financial institution will tend to take risk once they find that if they succeed in the happy adventure, they receive a 1 hundred million dollar annual bonus, while if they fail, being fired is the utmost "penalty" they can get. So why not burn other people's money?!
Speaking of Wall Street, there's one thing that has confused me for a long time: why can the financial sector provide the best rewarding jobs? Of course learning finance is definitely not a piece of cake--it's heavily math demanding,and thus reduces labor supply in this sector of the economy---but it can't be more difficult than physics or math itself. Sometimes graduates of the latter two majors can't even find a job. In a highly developed market economy, like the one in the US, there does not exist an industry that consistently makes supermoney--not even in the case of monopoly and oligopoly, because the government on behalf of the people can seek rents and thus take away the extra profit. One example is the auctioning of taxi or telecom licenses--the prices of the licenses are exactly that part of the profit. Furthermore, the regulation exerted upon financial markets and institutions are actually quite heavy (altho not heavy enough judging from the recent crisis), which means without them banks should have earned more. So the myth is: why is the banking industry, almost from its birth, an industry that makes big money and produces large numbers of golden collars? Can anyone bust it for me?
As one of the less finance-minded Rothschild once pointed out, banking is simply about facilitating the moving of money from point A to point B. It's not a lot of hard work, but the rewards are there for the picking.
As a student in a business school, I've been paying the keenest of attention to the ongoing financial carnage that has ravaged the world. It is really the worst of times to do a business degree. I graduate next summer and fortunately, I am an accounting student. It makes life a bit more palatable, at least. While auditors do not make big bucks, they are rarely out of a job as well. This is fully consistent with the basic tenet of finance - high rewards come with high risks.
Actually, all is not doom and gloom. There are still rich pickings if one only knows where to search for them. I have a friend who could still land himself with an investment banking job at Deutsche Bank despite layoffs or a headcount freeze being the order of the day with most banks nowadays. It does prove the veracity of the old HR axiom: good talent would always be in demand regardless of the economic outlook. _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
As a student in a business school, I've been paying the keenest of attention to the ongoing financial carnage that has ravaged the world. It is really the worst of times to do a business degree. I graduate next summer and fortunately, I am an accounting student. It makes life a bit more palatable, at least. While auditors do not make big bucks, they are rarely out of a job as well. This is fully consistent with the basic tenet of finance - high rewards come with high risks.
Great to see you again, Loic!
Do you have a plan for graduate studies? (Hopefully my question will not be an intrusion upon your privacy! Hehe)
As one of the less finance-minded Rothschild once pointed out, banking is simply about facilitating the moving of money from point A to point B. It's not a lot of hard work, but the rewards are there for the picking.
If it's just for the picking then everybody will go pick it and the profit will be thin (with competition prices of services rendered will fall) and the industry, lean.
Amazingly, when I look at the jobs that are posted online, i see finance and IT jobs everywhere! And healthcare, of course -- people will always be sick.
We have been warned at our hospital to expect more patients to present with no insurance as people lose jobs (in the US, your employer is the main source of health insurance). Even though we are a private hospital, we do take on charity cases for the good of the community, and it's just a financial balancing act to make sure that overall we remain profitable, even if we lose money on certain individuals. Healthcare costs and charges are truly an impenetrable mystery, not only for the patients, but for the providers, who contract various services out to other providers. The billing mistakes on all ends are just staggering. So are the write-offs. I have a friend who did dialysis for over a year at $1200 a pop, three times a week, and while his insurance picked up 80%, can you imagine paying the other 20%? Neither could he. Especially when just one session is what he makes all month. He never even opens his bills, much less reaches for a checkbook. But no one seems to notice -- his doctor still sees him regularly. Billing is outsourced to another company-- the doc wouldn't even know my friend was in arrears. And the numbers are now so astronomical they are just laughable, more than anything he feels he has hanging over his head.
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