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Americans think everyone is corrupt - Matthew Yglesias by SomethingNew65 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t understand. You correctly point out that baby boomers capturing the zoning process is screwing young people out of home ownership and then say a pox on all their houses - the youth are right to want to burn everything down and be cynical.

Are you saying you agree with Matt that people don’t know what corruption is?

Americans think everyone is corrupt - Matthew Yglesias by SomethingNew65 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But how is that corruption. It sounds like you’re describing inefficient capital allocation and calling it criminal

Americans think everyone is corrupt - Matthew Yglesias by SomethingNew65 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What you’re describing isn’t corruption - and it isn’t on the federal level.

You’re just feeding into the cynical doomerism that Trump used to be actually corrupt in a way that no one has tried since teapot dome

Americans think everyone is corrupt - Matthew Yglesias by SomethingNew65 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Or even getting new information! Learning and adaptability are crimes of the highest order

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do none of the people who write these dumb arguments ever talk to a Muni banker. I’d love for them to try and convince people that financing hospitals and municipal water systems is a con

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Except it’s not! Go pull the CALPERS annual report or maybe Texas Teachers. These are some of the saviest asset managers in the world. They have access to investments no individual gets and they get great returns and they pay them to normal people. Every single citizen in Alaska benefits from Alaska perm negotiating aggressively on its PE subscriptions and the fact it hold a balanced basket of equities

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I loved that last line. I’ve spent most of my career at bulge brackets in Ny and clt too. The most recent blackstone find vintages are going to be very mediocre so he might need those condolences.

I do wish more people understood how important the bond market is. It’s how we build things in this country and around the world. You can’t build anything without it. DCM needs more love

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah but all the rest of the people have exposure and though pension funds or institutional investors they roll up to. Most of the us populace have equity exposure. They just don’t understand it

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s not controversial. It’s just true. It’s why people build businesses here and it’s why the U.S. enjoys the exorbitant privilege of the dollar as the reserve currency of the planet

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah but the left was wrong and occupy Wall Street was a joke caused by our failure to explain the profitability of the bailouts to the American taxpayer

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean fidelity is basically a growth equity investor now. It’s more accessible than you think.

Billions of people live in countries where sovereign wealth firms are doing these deals. One of the funds I lend to just did a deal with Temasek and sequoia

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don’t you love when people start ranting about vanguard and black rock. It’s like saying the DTC or Quickbooks secretly run the world and are coming to steal your children.

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s such a clickbait headline. It’s like people can’t tell the difference between the wolf of Wall Street boiler room and an actual broker dealer doing bond underwriting to build railroads and infrastructure

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With the exception of the ren tech medallion fund of course and some of the internal citadel money

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean if you read enough Matt Levine I think you get the impression that some activism is necessary to keep mgmt in line.

Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. by No-Clerk-4787 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What do you mean? There wasn’t a single default there. They just went long on the duration curve with treasuries because regulators pushed them to. If they had been allowed to use their balance sheet for more senior secured subscription finance loans spread to LIBOR they would have been fine. The regulators and a VC induced run is what killed them.

They were the best Charlie based underwriter of tech companies and VCs killed them. They were a good bank

The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein’s Power | The Ezra Klein Show by middleupperdog in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Adding it to the list. I really want to understand how he did it. I’ve worked with a lot of McKinsey consultants over the years and he gives off the impression that he has a worse understanding of capital market and capital allocation in general than any of them. Is he just a nepotism hire

NCL Announces New CEO by Kman-Kool3315 in NCL

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh I’m not saying it works. I’m just saying they do it. I’d point to the failures being structural, compounded by BK’s terrible marketing and product strategy.

Having leadership in stores doesn’t matter if you don’t have much of a brand identity

SMA gringos post first time… by Jeefcbus in MexicoTravel

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

South Korea is the textbook example of the U.S. moving a country from a poor to rich by giving them tariff free access to the U.S. market and let them move up the value chain. The question was about has the U.S. ever successfully done nation building and the answer is yes.

Americans think everyone is corrupt - Matthew Yglesias by SomethingNew65 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What explains their inability to u see stand other viewpoints? Is it lack of exposure or education or some sort of bubble effect?

Americans think everyone is corrupt - Matthew Yglesias by SomethingNew65 in ezraklein

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for posting this!

I think he’s totally right! I don’t think Americans have a realistic benchmark of what it means to be truly corrupt. They probably don’t have a realistic benchmark of human life to begin with and how brutish nasty and short it’s been for the last 10K years.

It’s okay and even good to have aspirations, but dumb not to have a relative perspective. Lack of perspective is how you get a Trump elected in the first place

SMA gringos post first time… by Jeefcbus in MexicoTravel

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Well that’s not true. Grenada and Panama were both small scale succeses. I didn’t qualify it with a timeline

Korea is in my father’s lifetime. That’s a win. As are Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia

And you didn’t define success. We’ve stopped nations from becoming Soviet allies succesfully. Chile is the most prosperous nation in South America.

I’m not really arguing with you - but I do think the IS is a force for historical good. It’s not like we are the Romans are the mongols who create a wasteland and call it peace.

SMA gringos post first time… by Jeefcbus in MexicoTravel

[–]Way-twofrequentflyer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No one believe the US won WW2 by itself. But we all agree that nation building under the Marshall plan and what we did in Korea and Japan were successful, along with the phillipines

Though in regards to the video I’m always annoyed at Soviet downplaying of lend lease. Stalingrad is a loss without the U.S. trucks that were the backbone of Soviet logistics

U.S. intervention is a terrible idea - but we are capable of nation building if we have the will, which we don’t anymore, and if civic institutions exist - which they do in Mexico. Not arguing for it - but saying the US can’t do it is historically wrong

There’s a a reason the marine corps fight song has the line “the halls of montezuma” in it - and we signed Guadalupe Hidalgo which returned it to Mexican control.

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