Hacker News Reader

Comment by RandomLensman | Hacker News Reader

Placing bets successfully needs way more than a general understanding of what might happen (and, of course, capital). Also, you conveniently ignore all the economists that got rich in financial markets over the years.

View on HN

Name them. Which economists are rich from their theories or is Warren Buffet right about them, because that's who I'm paraphrasing from...

Here's the quote: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/18/warren-buffett-explains-why-...

Economists that made it in financial markets (examples): Cliff Asness, Barr Rosenberg, John Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Druckenmiller, Kenneth Griffin , John Paulson (but that's an MBA) - is that enough billionaire economists for you? What exactly made each rich is a bit more tricky, but certainly Asness and Rosenberg got rich based on their research.

Those are not economists by trade nor profession. None of those people had PhDs in Econ. Never once were they called “economists”

Why does Asness' PhD in finance under Farmer not count, for example? Is a financial economist not an economist, i.e., things like the EMH are not part of economics? Why do you think their training in economics was irrelevant?

This list is rather disingenuous.

> Kenneth Cordele Griffin is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder, chief executive officer, co-chief investment officer, and 80% owner of Citadel LLC, a multinational hedge fund. He also owns Citadel Securities, one of the largest market makers in the U.S.

I don’t see economist anywhere in Ken’s Wikipedia.

Last sentence under Early Life and Education says he graduated with a degree in economics.

You have a very low bar for classifying someone as an ‘economist’. I see why that’s the case as it does help your narrative but does not really lend much strength to your argument in my view.

What then is an economist or a physicist or a mathematician etc. when graduating with a degree in the respective field isn't it? What additional thing needs to be there?

Just saying it doesn't count is a bit weak because that is saying training in a certain discipline and graduating in it has no meaning or skill transfer of relevance.

How about holding that title professionally? Or maybe just having him call himself an economist at some point? But your opinions are just that, and my opinion is your arguments are without merit.

I find it interesting that you know that the people on the list never ever referred to themselves as an economist.

But I guess your point is to make sure that economists don't have any successes, not some deeper introspection into whether the study of economics can help in being successful.

Yup, that did it. I am now convinced that some classes Ken took 45 years ago make him a modern day, professional economist. Guess I’m an economist too! I’m sure Paul Krugman would love the comparison.

By that logic there are no economists or scientist in senior business leadership positions - fair enough.

Yup, just like there few that would consider themselves philosophers just because they took some philosophy classes in undergrad. Glad we have found some consensus on this.

Maybe academic economists don't find it interesting to 'simply' make money and find reward in our endeavours? Plenty of STEM folks could work on Wall Street as quants for way more money, but choose not to.

Paul McCulley (an economist) made certain predictions while working at PIMCO (as did Paul Krugman), and then he left and Bill Gross (PIMCO founder) ignored what he said and made certain financial moves and lost a whole bunch of money:

* https://www.businessinsider.com/this-was-the-bill-gross-blun...

* https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/opinion/paul-krugman-depr...

Gross is way richer than McCulley (or Krugman), and yet the rich guys got it wrong and the poor(er) guys got it right. If only Gross had listened to the economists (that worked for him).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com