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Everyone Hates Harvard
theodp writes: Hedge fund manager John Paulson personally took home nearly $4 billion in 2007 after convincing banks to create securities of sub-prime mortgages he could bet against. Now Harvard, which originally passed on an opportunity to join alum Paulson in his big bet, is also reaping the rewards of the nation's financial crisis as it renames its engineering school the "Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences" after receiving a staggering $400 million donation from Paulson, the largest gift in the university's history. Quartz argues that Paulson's $400 million Harvard donation just reinforces inequality. Author Malcolm Gladwell took to Twitter to voice his distaste (sampling: 1. "It came down to helping the poor or giving the world's richest university $400 mil it doesn't need. Wise choice John!" 2. "If billionaires don't step up, Harvard will soon be down to its last $30 billion." 3. "It's going to be named the John Paulson School of Financial Engineering.") And, in Everyone Hates Harvard, Philip Greenspun notes that even WSJ readers reacted with vitriol to the news. "I would have thought that Paulson would be a hero to market-following WSJ readers," remarks Greenspun, "not a villain."
He wanted to bet against the housing market, the banks took his bet, and he won. Many others who did the same thing mis-timed their move and lost. So why should he be in jail?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
convincing banks to create securities of sub-prime mortgages he could bet against
The article does not say that he did that. Instead, the article says that the banks bought insurance against mortgage defaults (credit default swaps), and that prices of such insurance was very low. John Paulson decided the price was too low compared to the risk, so he bought a lot of the same insurance. When the mortgages started defaulting and prices for insurance went up, he sold the insurance on to the banks at a profit.
If there had been a hundred John Paulsons out there, credit default swaps would have gone up in price much earlier, forcing the mortgage lenders to rein-in their subprime lending, thereby either defusing the crisis entirely or at least making it much less bad. Alas, there was only one, and he was good at not getting the word out, so not many copycats. John Paulson did everyone a service and should be rewarded, not punished. The people who lend out money to people who had no chance of paying back should be punished, not rewarded.
Anyway, I have not read other articles about him, so maybe he does deserve his apparently terrible reputation.
I am somewhat surprised that it has fallen to me to defend a 1%'er. This is not exactly my usual modus operandi.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
You're thinking of the wrong school. Mass murderers have daddy buy their way into being a C student at Yale.
Al Gore or John Kerry?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
As others have pointed out, betting against the housing market is a good thing. It was betting for, not against, the housing market that caused the problem. By betting against it, he incrementally raised the cost to the banks of making bad decisions. This is beneficial to society.
If you went to a Harvard, a Stanford, an MIT or a Texas A&M, and you happen to end up with more money than you know what to do with, you might be inclined to give a big pile of it to the university that got you started. And while that's a noble sentiment, you shouldn't. These places will continue turning out talented graduates no matter how much money you give them: you should give your money to a less-well-endowed institution, so that a larger number of students can get the same educational opportunity you had. Maybe your spouse went to a small liberal arts college. Maybe there's a place right down the road from your mansion that could use your help. But MIT and Stanford don't need your money, and they won't do much good with it.
A bit of data: Harvard's endowment amounts to $1.7 million per student. With a reasonable return on endowment investment, hey could quite literally abolish tuition forever if they wanted to. Just across the river is Boston University, a really excellent institution with a strong research focus and really great graduates, ranked #42 by US News. Its endowment per student is 1/25th of Harvard's.
Donating money toward improving education is a worthy goal, but don't get sentimental. Put the money where it'll do the most good for the most people.
(Full disclosure: I'm a professor at a liberal arts college whose endowment per student is mediocre at best.)
Somebody who isn't giving $400 million to the poor is criticising somebody else who isn't giving $400 million to the poor for not giving $400 million to the poor?
Ok - got it.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
The issue with Harvard and the other Ive League schools it the pretension they they as individual are better then everyone else.
Granted getting into Harvard takes a lot of work, but there are a slew of smart people who could have gone but chose not to for a huge set of reasons.
But what these schools do well isn't their education, but the people you get in contact with will keep you in the network of successful people.
Now being around these people has its pluses and minuses. You pick up good skills however sometimes general comparison is loss from being in an environment of competing ambition.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As others have pointed out, betting against the housing market is a good thing. It was betting for, not against, the housing market that caused the problem. By betting against it, he incrementally raised the cost to the banks of making bad decisions. This is beneficial to society.
The question is what is implied with that "he convinced the banks to create the securities that could bet against". That might be fraud or at least morally questionable.
Thank you for saying what should be said. People don't JUST go to Harvard for an education and saying criticizing them is "intellectual bashing" is a backhanded compliment.
The big reason to go to Harvard is because it's a fraternity of CEOs and you are connected. While a lot of people are convinced that's where the great minds come from -- well, the successful have heard that that's where the great minds come from because that's where they came from and obviously luck and the fact that their friends are billionaires had nothing to do with it, so they recruit from Harvard. And who can knock the positive attitude from people who just can't fail?
It's a vicious circle of self-reinforcing success.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Caused another country to collapse?
Were you alive in September 2008? Because Bush made a pretty good start at forcing this one to collapse.
Iraq and Syria wer both his poor decisions catching up to us. It isn't Obama's fault that Bush fucked up in '06 and decided Maliki would be a great prime Minister. The man started wars t5hat killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Meddle East without managing to kill the one guy we were going for (Osama) This is Carter or LBJ-league in terms of foreign policy. Domestically he's Buchanan-league. His programs massively increased Federal spending (mostly by buying prescription drugs and paying for those wars), cut revenue, and the MBA fucked up financial regulation so badly that it's not an exaggeration to say that our economy did not survive his last four months in office.
Don't get me wrong. the man's a really nice guy, and apparently a wonderful father, and if a Pollster called me and asked me if I approved of him I'd almost certainly say yes. But objectively speaking his tenure was a disaster.
OTOH, Obama's solved the wars. He managed to kill that one guy we've been trying to knock off since Clinton. The economy is growing, and the deficit is shrinking. His major domestic policy accomplishment is working more or less as planned, despite the Obama Derangement Syndrome's insistence that some new data point nobody gives a shit about means that it's about to collapse on itself every six months. 10 years from now his "evolving" on gay marriage will be remembered as the brave stand that forced dead-enders to give up their Evil Opposition to the Civil Rights Issue of the Era.
No one starts with a clean slate. Every president inherits problems. That's the job they begged and pleaded for. Blaming the previous president after 7 years is BS.
Just crawl out from under a rock? We have present day politicians writing books blaming FDR for most everything. Or blaming Hoobert Heever for most everything. Only been a few years since eh?
Its not that I am all that wild about the present occupant, but it is pretty hard to blame him for firmly entrenching us in the eternal warfare practice of the middle east. Once you are in that club, you can check out any timer you like, but you can never leave. Presidency or party affiliation is irrelevent. Dubya and the neocons were hell bent on getting boots on the ground then, just as they are now.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Is Harvard known for engineering?
Short answer is yes. They have a rather distinguished list of alumni. Some of the ones people here might know of include Bob Metcalf (inventor of ethernet), Dennis Ritchie (inventor of C), Fred Brooks (director of development for OS/360), Steve Balmer (yeah I know), Trip Hawkins (founder of Electronic Arts) and Bill Gates (didn't graduate but attended and yeah I know...)
Harvard engineering might not be on the level with MIT but it doesn't suck.
They are greedy assholes. Even Adam Smith recognized that. The insight Smith had that greedy assholes actually produce beneficial outcomes for society.
Think of capitalism a bit like nuclear power. Capitalism is all about harnessing greed to the benefit of society. Unmanaged or poorly managed it results in a catastrophic meltdown to the detriment of all. With the right controls in place and good oversight (but not too much) it can be a hugely powerful force for good. This requires sensible rules fairly enforced. Too few rules and the meltdown occurs (see 2008 financial crisis). Too many rules and you don't get much benefit because nothing happens (the reaction shuts down). If things get too hot or a problem occurs you institute rules (like control rods) to throttle down the reaction before it blows.
Since Obama care, my coverage has gone up, my premiums have gone down, and the local hospital has reduced its prices. A local representative from the local hospital came to our work to explain coverage and premium changes because we get our insurance through the hospital network. They said since more people in general have insurance, there are fewer people going to the ER and more people scheduling proper doctor visits, which is driving down costs because the hospital is no longer having to eat the costs of poor people unable to pay a $1k ER bill, but can afford a $80 doctor's bill.
He IS NOT the 'architect behind the subprime mortgages'. He saw that the banks were creating an unholy, likely illegal (but the SEC didn't appear to care EVEN THOUGH HE WENT TO THEM SEVERAL TIMES TO DISCUSS WHAT WAS GOING ON) and then basically decided to short them. He took enormous risks doing so. The only con were the big banks who blissfully didn't care what the hell they were packaging up as long as they could sell it.
There are a number of books on the subject. The big banks carefully held the wool over their eyes. They reaped billions and got their wrists slapped.
Paulson isn't exactly a 'nice' guy. They don't make them on Wall Street, but he worked legally within the system. The banks, arguably not so much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Posting anonymously b/c of mod points, but it sounds like he wasn't exactly a good guy. (My username is captnjohnny1618.)
http://www.deepcapture.com/201...
Yes, he did be against the overvaluation of the market. The shifty thing though is that he utilized resources that nearly 100% of people didn't have access to and ultimately designed a financial object that was certainly going to fail, ensuring a huge return on his investment. Instead of calling attention and trying to fix this major major problem that would have an effect not just on our economy and our people, but economies and people around the world, he decided to take advantage of it and make a huge amount of money at the expense of millions. (If he had done that, while at the same time making a huge amount of noise about the ways he saw the economy about to fail, this would be a different conversation).
A comparable situation in our field would be a computer person ("hacker") with significant inroads to some big chip maker (Intel let's say) identifies a weak point in the chip design exposing some hugely powerful zero day attack. He helps designs a complex "fix" that ultimately looks like it will solve the issue, yet doesn't even come close, and starts selling that to the chip company for a few millions of dollars. The complexity of it helps to obscure (for a spell) the reality that it is actually a worthless patch, and he has maintained enough separation from the issue to deny at least some of the responsibility. Selling this makes a lot of money for a lot of people, but this guys waits a little longer to cash in for himself.
Where it really gets shifty is that this guy knows that the fix is going to fail and it's only a matter of time, so he starts betting on the fix failing (in reality, he starts "hedging" on it, which is complicated and I don't understand all of its intricacies). Lots of it. So when the fix fails, as he knew it would and maybe even planned it to, he gets to cash in, and look like one of the smart ones who saw it coming.
In reality he saw it coming because he had a big hand in creating it.
Now in IT/CS/etc. we call that guy a huge dick for not telling the rest of the world about the problem and letting the free software community try and come up with a fix. If he had even remotely tried to peddle his BS fix, it would've been noticed and obvious, and people would accuse him of attempted fraud. If he tried to somehow pretend like he didn't have a responsibility to tell everyone, politicians and lawyers would be all over him with some trumped up charges that feign social responsibility, when it reality are just trying to recover the money this guy took from them. This guy just doesn't have to put up with that shit because all of those politicians and lawyers are his buddies and probably walked away pretty ok from all of this while the rest of us have to sit around and pick up the pieces.
TL;DR: You didn't have some great insight into the problem if you win by betting on a fixed fight where you knew the outcome... and helped set up the fight... and helped invent boxing.
Brilliant riposte. Not.
Sending the navy without funding to come back: Theodore Roosevelt, 1905, Dominican Republic
Federalization of the National Guard to quell civil unrest: Dwight Eisenhower, September 24th 1957, Federalization of the Arkansas National Guard to enforce the integration of Central High School
Federalization of the National Guard to quell civil unrest: Lyndon Johnson, March 20, 1965, Federalization of Alabama National Guard to supervise the march from Selma to Montgomery
Executive orders used by fiat:
1793, George Washington, first executive order regarding U.S. Citizens and the War between England and France
1861, Abraham Lincoln, suspension of John Merryman's right of Habeas Corpus, detainment in Fort McHenry
Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 3,522 executive orders modifying everything from tax to works agencies
====(first order was on first day in office for a 4 day bank closure ans restructuring of the financial system)
1952, Harry Truman, Siezure of the nations steel mills to prevent a strike (later rejected as unconstitutional, but purpose already served)
Early 2002, George Bush, NSA authorization for domestic wire tapping
Early 2009, Barack Obama, Closure of Gitmo scheduled
2011, Barack Obama, Closure of Gitmo executive order revoked by executive order
2012, Barack Obama, Tougher regulation of Greenhouse gasses
2012, Barack Obama, Changes to deportation policy
2012, Barack Obama, Education and employment for returning troops
(various), Barack Obama, freezing of foreign assets belonging to Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, and Syria
2014, Barack Obama, prohibition on federal contractors discriminating against LGBT, and against discrimination in federal employment as well
Clinton aide Paul Begala told The New York Times: "Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kind of cool.". This was in response to the 1998 Whitewater scandal making it impossible for Clinton to move legislation through the Republican controlled congress. So he didn't; instead, he issued executive orders.
There have also been some rumblings about Obama raising taxes via executive order:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ro...
Since Obama has been lame duck (he is in his second term), there's really nothing, other than the threat of impeachment, from pretty well doing whatever the hell he wants, in terms of executive orders and military orders. And as I noted, that threat has no teeth; it's not like anything he does is going to prevent him getting reelected, so it's not like he has to care about that.
There's also the little fact that he rescinded the Gitmo closure order in 2011 -- in other words, he has no intention of keeping that campaign promise to the American people (nor, really, should he, since extraterritoriality is legally useful to the U.S. in many instances where what the U.S. is doing would be refused to be hosted by another country at one of the black sites).
So now you have examples of everything on my list.
I think it is you who need to "grow the fuck up".
While you might not have directly gone to a clinic in 45 years, you definitely have benefited from good healthcare services. Notice how the US doesn't have polio, ebola, or any other epidemic? You're welcome. Now you can also get some meds for the delusions of tyranny.