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Saturday, July 20, 2013

Business Class

This bit of apologia may turn out to be the Rosetta Stone of the economic collapse, when all is said and done. Any manager who literally Joe Biden believes that all positive NPV projects should be accepted has pretty much cogitated him/herself out of a job.

Theoretically this is why a decent portfolio manager would also be running regression analyses on the full beta of the portfolio, not just grabbing at anything and everything that pulls a "positive" NPV when run through Excel. You don't need to pay someone six figures and stock options in that; you can pretty much train a chimp to push buttons.

Not only that, but sheesh, if we are talking about a "project" which doesn't actually produce anything, but is a credit default swap on a put option on a collection of tranched subprime mortgages that have been laundered through the wringer of endless mortgage rebuyers and robosigned bullshit, then you are no longer talking about economic production. You're talking about a bookmaking operation, a casino, one whose business model is predicated on having the government give it money at 0%, so's it can turn around and lend it to the peons at 3-30%, depending on your particular mode of interaction with the beast.

Don't ask why, if the gov't can lend money out at 0%, why it can't do microloans to individuals at that rate, thus allowing said individuals to put money directly back into the economy, while disempowering a parasite class of middlemen and spreadsheet grifters. What's left of this economy is based on usury and racketeering, pure and simple.

At this point, that applies to higher education probably more than anything else in the American system, aside from health care. If you have to go $100K or so into debt to secure an advanced degree and enhance your earning power, but the jobs aren't out there, so you're on the hook for 15-20 years instead of 5-10 -- like it used to be before tuitions went through the roof -- the bottom line is that that's a full decade or so where you are unable to spend into the economy. Trust me on this; if I wasn't making barely median wage and still facing about $60K in student-loan debt, I'd be spending my earnings, not hoarding it in the Caymans like the Scrooge McDucks who really run this banana stand.

Get back to obsessing over royal babies and Kanye West and man-bites-dog stories that have nothing to do with you. Go back to sleep.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Some of us are awake, Bro, some of us.