tagged: inneresting
[LINK] New York Times - Financers and Sex Trafficking
Some more terrible press for Goldman Sachs.
tagged: inneresting
tagged: inneresting
Excerpt from “The Next Decade” - Innovation and Military
“The second problem in this rate of innovation, oddly enough, lies with the military. In the nineteenth century, the development of the steam engine and the development of the British navy (and its imperial reach) moved hand in hand. In the twentieth century, the United States was the engine of global technological development, and much of that innovation was funded and driven by military acquisitions, and almost all of that had some spin-off civilian application. The development of both the aircraft and radios was heavily subsidized by the military and resulted in the subsequent birth of the airline industry and the broadcasting industry. The interstate highway system was first conceived of as a military project to facilitate the rapid movement of troops in case of Soviet attack or nuclear catastrophe. The microchip was developed for use in the small digital computers that guided both nuclear missiles and the rockets needed to put payloads in space. And of course the internet, which entered public consciousness in the 1990s, began as a military communications project in the 1960s.
Wars are times of intense technological transformation, because societies invest — sometimes with extensive borrowing — when and here matters of life and death are at stake.”
- George Friedman, The Next Decade
"Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me, but they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies."
A History of Wall Street ‘Fuck You’ Resignations
Greg Smith’s screw you, I quit op-ed this morning in the Times might be the latest such missive to emerge from the finance world, but it’s hardly the first. In fact, it’s part of a whole emerging literary genre.
In 2008, there was Andrew Lahde’s tune-in, drop out, just-gonna-manage-my own-wealthmissive in the Financial Times. Lahde, the man behind Lahde Capital Management, was telling the world about why, exactly, he was done with finance. Just a month or so after Lehman, he’d calculated that the “low-hanging fruit” wasn’t there, and none of the miserable lifestyle that went along with amassing such wealth was worth it. He also threw in some random screeds about pot and the government. The letter went viral.
The next year, Jake DeSantis quit a sinking AIG via an open letter to the firm’s CEO in the Times opinion pages. He was among the executives who’d been forced into taking a $1 salary after the government bailouts. Unlike Lahde, he wanted to make a targeted criticism of his employer, and to defend the average Joe banker as a victim of sorts: “You also are aware that most of the employees of your financial products unit had nothing to do with the large losses. And I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. ” He positioned himself as a bit of an angel in exiting, with a pledge to give his so-called “retention payment” to those affected by the financial crisis.
(Source: anticapitalist)
tagged: inneresting
NYTimes: Capitalism, Version 2012
“Rothkopf’s view, which I share, is that the thing others have most admired and tried to emulate about American capitalism is precisely what we’ve been ignoring: America’s success for over 200 years was largely due to its healthy, balanced public-private partnership — where government provided the institutions, rules, safety nets, education, research and infrastructure to empower the private sector to innovate, invest and take the risks that promote growth and jobs.
When the private sector overwhelms the public, you get the 2008 subprime crisis. When the public overwhelms the private, you get choking regulations. You need a balance…”
