Old Wall Street Discusses the New | Hacker News Reader

Old Wall Street Discusses the New

norris.blogs.nytimes.com

54 pointsMaysonL10 comments

I thought Michael Lewis' "Liar’s Poker" was describing a world that was ending, not that a world was beginning. And what it was describing, it turns out, is a period in finance that went on for another 25 years or 20 years.

The incentives for people on Wall Street got so screwed up, that the people who worked there became blinded to their own long term interests because the short term interests were so overpowering. So they behaved in ways that were antithetical to their own long term interests.

Aren't the banks themselves doing the same thing? Use OPM (taxpayer bailouts) to socialize any losses on huge bets with huge payoffs.

sure but you can't attach moral obligation or duty to a corporate entity, all you can do is regulate (and we are trying...)

to tie the two together, i don't believe regulators are paying nearly enough attention to how incentives have changed over the past 15 years and why board of directors have become powerless to common sense in this arena

> sure but you can't attach moral obligation or duty to a corporate entity, all you can do is regulate (and we are trying...)

Actually, that's not "all you can do".

Note that regulators "don't have any skin in the game" and that regulation is systemic risk (by definition).

Also, regulation is always behind.

And that's without even addressing the elephant in the room, regulatory capture.

although i appreciate your attempt at libertarianism, your logic is non-nonsensical: you attack regulation without offering an alternative or re-defining the problem

> your logic is non-nonsensical: you attack regulation without offering an alternative or re-defining the problem

Non-sensical?

Do you really believe that the properties of regulation are affected by alternatives? (Hint: the relative merit is, but not the absolute properties.)

It's perfectly appropriate to interrupt a regulation love-fest by pointing out that it does not have the properties that its fans claim.

Do you really want to argue "we must do something, regulation is something, therefore we must regulate"?

And, there's the small matter that regulation can take many forms. For example, torts are a form of regulation.

Yet, question bureaucrats, and folks rise up.

You remember bureaucrats. They're folks with no skin in the game....

in politics relative merit is what gets things done (Hint: you can get around this by starting your own libertarian paradise on some uninhabited island, may I submit the name "jackassland" for your consideration)

And old wall street was investing their own money rather than OPM? They must have had such a bad life, those old timers.

Judging by the title, I expected the op to rant about quants.

I thought this was about the movies. ha!

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