To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital–to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.
I’d never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous–which is one of the reasons the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people more or less like me, as a fraud. Sooner rather than later, there would come a Great Reckoning when Wall Street would wake up and hundreds if not thousands of young people like me, who had no business making huge bets with other people’s money, would be expelled from finance.
When I sat down to write my account of the experience in 1989–Liar’s Poker, it was called–it was in the spirit of a young man who thought he was getting out while the getting was good. I was merely scribbling down a message on my way out and stuffing it into a bottle for those who would pass through these parts in the far distant future.
Category: Taxes
Judge Tosses TDS Lawsuit Against Minnesota Municipal Fiber Optic Project
When the 12,000 person city of Monticello, Minnesota voted overwhelmingly to put in a city-owned and -operated fiber-optic network that would link up all homes and business to a fast Internet pipe, the local telco sued to stop them. Wednesday, District Court Judge Jonathan Jasper dismissed the suit with prejudice after finding that the city was well within its rights to build the network by issuing municipal bonds. In this case, however, a total loss for the telco might actually turn out to be a perverse sort of victory.
The judge’s ruling, a copy of which was seen by Ars Technica, is noteworthy for two things: (1) the judge’s complete dismissal of Bridgewater Telephone Company’s complaint and (2) his obvious anger at the underfunding of Minnesota’s state courts. Indeed, the longest footnote in the opinion is an extended jeremiad about how much work judges are under and why it took so long to decide this case, even going so far as to cite approvingly a newspaper editorial backing more funds for the court.
Bridgewater’s basic complaint was that cities in Minnesota are not allowed to use bonds in order to offer data services to residents, because they lack the necessary authority. State statute says that such bonds may be issued for a host of projects (sewers, stadia, playgrounds, and “homes for aged,” among others), and they can more generally be used to fund “other public conveniences.” But is Internet access a “public convenience”?
More here.
Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold on the $700,000,000,000 bailout, or Splurge
Thank you for contacting me to share your thoughts on the administration’s proposal to purchase up to $700 billion of bad mortgage debt. I very much appreciated hearing from you.
I opposed the bailout plan passed by Congress, because though well intentioned, and certainly much improved over the administration’s original proposal, it remained deeply flawed. It failed to offset the cost of the plan, leaving taxpayers to bear the burden of serious lapses of judgment by private financial institutions, their regulators, and the enablers in Washington who paved the way for this catastrophe by removing the safeguards that had protected consumers and the economy since the great depression. Second, this bill did not include meaningful provisions to help families facing foreclosure. This is more than just a matter of fairness – the housing crisis is the root cause of the credit market collapse, and unless we address it, any rescue package is far less likely to work. Finally, the measure failed to address the deeply flawed regulatory structure that paved the way for this crisis. Taxpayers deserve a plan that puts their concerns ahead of those who got us into this mess.
Again, thank you for contacting me. Please feel free to do so again in the future.
Bill Perkins Bailout Cartoon
Appeared recently in the New York Times print edition. More here.
Declan McCullagh notes the large amount of pork in the bill that passed Friday.
Updates on the $700,000,000,000 Fed / Wall Street / Mortgage Bailout
The proposed legislation would authorize Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to initiate what is likely to become the biggest government bailout in U.S. history, allowing him to spend up to $700 billion to relieve faltering banks and other firms of bad assets backed by home mortgages, which are falling into foreclosure at record rates.
The plan would give Paulson broad latitude to purchase any assets from any firms at any price and to assemble a team of individuals and institutions to manage them. In wielding those powers, Paulson and others hope to contain a crisis that already has caused the failure or forced the rescue of a half-dozen major Wall Street firms and unnerved markets around the world.
- Draft Bailout bill (200K PDF)
- Letter to Paulson & Bernanke
- Larry Summers:
Congressional negotiators have now completed action on a $700bn authorisation for the bail-out of the financial sector. This step was as necessary as the need for it was regrettable. There are hugely important tactical issues regarding the deployment of these funds that the authorities will need to consider in the weeks and months ahead if the chance of containing the damage is to be maximised. I expect to return to these issues once the legislation is passed.
In the meantime, it is necessary to consider the impact of the bail-out and the conditions necessitating it on federal budget policy. The idea seems to have taken hold in recent days that because of the unfortunate need to bail out the financial sector, the nation will have to scale back its aspirations in other areas such as healthcare, energy, education and tax relief. This is more wrong than right. We have here the unusual case where economic analysis actually suggests that dismal conclusions are unwarranted and the events of the last weeks suggest that for the near term, government should do more, not less. - Tom Wolfe’s latest is worth a read.
- My email to our Washington delegation.
My Thoughts on the Proposed $700,000,000,000 Fed/Wall Street / MortgageBailout
My email to Wisconsin Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl. I also sent this to Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin:
Dear Senator Feingold:
I am writing to express my opposition to the proposed $700,000,000,000 toxic debt instrument bailout.
I believe it is wrong for us to continue the practice of spending beyond our means and simply passing more debt to our children and grandchildren. It is also wrong to stoke the fires of inflation.
If you believe these funds are necessary, then I suggest the following:
- Mandatory across the board spending cuts that pay for at least 50% of this initiative. They must be across the board.
- A slight change in tax policy so that every American pays some taxes. The annual base tax cost should follow spending changes. Choose a small number. Think of this as a “co-pay”. We have a real problem with the perception that federal (and state) dollars somehow fall out of the sky.
- You might be able to insert the beginning of a consumption tax. I would be in favor of such a tax on luxury vehicles, large boats and private aircraft over $1M.
- Restore the estate tax rate to early 1990’s levels.
- Gas tax. Add a provision to raise the gas tax annually. We need to do this for economic and national security reasons.
In other words, if necessary, support the initiative, but not on the backs of our children and grandchildren.
Best wishes,
Jim
Related:
- Financial sector lobbying
- Public markup of the draft bailout legislation.
- SEC Oversight flaws
- NY Times on Countrywide Mortgage’s favorable deals with Senators Chris Dodd & Kent Conrade.
- Politico on Senator’s favorable mortgage deals.
Financial Sector Fetes Lawmakers Making Bailout Decisions
Some 258 parties, a number of them hosted by lobbyists for the finance, insurance, and real estate industries, have been thrown for members of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee this year, according to an investigation by the Sunlight Foundation’s Party Time project. Members of the House committee, along with the Senate Banking Committee, are considering the $700 billion bailout legislation for the financial sector proposed by the administration.
A sampling of parties include:
America Must Rescue the Bonuses at Goldman Sachs: Michael Lewis
Anyone who caught even a sliver of yesterday’s hearings in the U.S. Senate on the proposed Treasury bailout of the mortgage-backed securities market knows that the current financial crisis is far from over. Suddenly all sorts of previously unthinkable catastrophes seem possible.
The total collapse of the global financial system is one thing — everyone at Davos in January saw that coming. But the shrinkage of the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. bonus pool is another. Whatever else the Treasury achieves it must know that if the employees of Goldman suffer any sort of pay cut, it will be judged to have failed. And our country may never recover.
Last year Goldman paid its employees $20 billion, 44 percent of the firm’s revenue. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein took home $68.5 million, and many otherwise ordinary human beings took home $10 million or mor
The Power of One
A few years ago, I had an opportunity to hear “her deepness” Sylvia Earle speak. She included this short video in her presentation – “the Power of One“.
Earle emphasized the opportunities we all have to change the world. I recalled her talk while visiting with Hal Herron recently. Herron, of Riverton, Wyoming has been adding outdoor art to his home town in an interesting way.
Museums often create large banners to promote an exhibit. Herron sought out these banners after a showing is complete. He pays for shipping to Riverton and places them around the community for all to enjoy. Fascinating. He forwarded two photos, seen below:
Bill Perkin’s full page New York Times ad in today’s paper is another illustration of the “Power of One”. 
Perkins approach requires a certain size checkbook, of course 🙂
All of which reminds me of the “two greatest commandments”.
Five Reasons to Give Thanks for the Financial Collapse of the Decade
One of life’s rules is that there’s bad in good and good in bad. The total collapse of the U.S. financial system is no exception. Even in the midst of the current financial despair we can look around and identify many collateral benefits.
A lot of attractive office space seems to be opening up in midtown Manhattan, for instance, and the U.S. government is now getting paid to borrow money. (And with T-bills yielding 0 percent, they really ought to borrow a lot more of it, and quickly.)
And so as Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer John Mack blasts short sellers for his problems, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein swans around pretending to be above this little panic, we ought to step back and enjoy the positives.