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You know how much I gravitate to good satire, and when I started reading the following tidbit, I was screaming (with delight).
There's no doubt in my mind that if the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) people don't ensure some real changes in our financial architecture that we will be discussing this with real tears in our eyes in the near future.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
CommonDreams.org
Only $5 Billion a Year? C'mon, Finance Grad, You Can Do Better
It's an exciting time for you guys. You know you can beat those hedge fund managers. You're better educated, you're ambitious and creative. Go for $10 billion. Or maybe, a few years from now, you'll be the first trillion dollar man!
John Paulson, arguably the industry's biggest star and one of the wealthiest people in the world after making billions of dollars in 2007 with bearish bets on subprime mortgages. Mr. Paulson scored more than $5 billion in profits in 2010.
Here's an example to motivate you. In just one year a single hedge fund manager made enough money to hire 100,000 new teachers while calling his $5 billion income "carried interest" so he wouldn't have to pay any taxes.
Tough to beat, I know, but take it as a challenge. Go invest, young man. Go for a trillion. That's only 200 times more than the hedge fund haul. Once you hit a trillion, you'll be close to the total U.S. income of $8 trillion. You'll get a perfect score on the Gini income distribution scale. You'll be famous. All the new foundations will be named after you.
Of course, you've got a lot of competition right now, a lot of colleagues who would like their own piece of the pie. The financial sector, which made up 16% of domestic corporate profits in 1980, now makes up over 40% of those profits. The best and brightest graduate students aren't going into science or engineering or medicine anymore. They're going into finance. No sense making products when you can make bets on mortgage failures, using other people's money in case the bets go bad.
More motivation comes to you from the incomparable Ayn Rand, whose "Atlas Shrugged" paved the way for unbounded post-war capitalism. "Run for your life," she says, "from any man who tells you that money is evil...money is the barometer of a society's virtue."
You have Congress on your side, with its continued support for lower taxes on earnings that don't require any work, most of the gains going to the 20% of Americans who own 90 percent of the stocks. And you've perfected the art of financial subterfuge with illusions that would do a carnival magician proud:
- "Spring Loading": Timing a stock option to precede good corporate news.
- "Bullet Dodging": Timing a stock option to follow bad corporate news.
- Back-Dating: Changing the purchase date on a stock option to a time when the price was lower.
- 'Put' and 'Call' chicanery: Getting a tax credit for a stock loss without actually selling the stock.
- Real Estate rascality: Avoiding taxes on a property sale by calling it a loan.
You, finance grad, will be a self-made man. You don't need government when you can create your own mini-society with private schools and security forces, a $250,000 playhouse for the kids, a yacht complete with golf course, submarine, beach, and a second-home mortgage deduction.
You will be creating jobs (on the yacht). You will be contributing more and more to our political system. You will be an example for the millions of Americans who plan to earn as much as you, or to be an NBA star. And above all, you can reflect upon what future generations will say you contributed to this world.
They're not interested in future generations or the world. These people are only interested in one thing. They are not going to spend time reflecting. They are the definition of a sociopath. And their conduct has now been legalized, become celebrated. Others have played to this crowd and the world has seen how well that has worked out.