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Morning Reading
Good morning. Hope you had a good weekend. Here are a few items to get the week started:
In defense of Wall Street (Real Clear Markets):
Investment banks help society by seeking the best commercial ideas and introducing opportunities for growth. When successful, these ideas elevate everyone's standard of living. Therefore, investment bankers who recognize value where others don't (Silicon Valley is littered with venture capital firms that turned down opportunities to finance Google ( GOOG - news - people )) should get massive bonuses--it is the logical and happy result of visionary finance.
Is it good to apologize for greed? (Chris Farrell/Businessweek):
If you think the controversy over the gigantic hauls at Wall Street powerhouses during tough economic times--for example, the current dustup over Goldman Sachs Croesus-like 2009 bonus pool--is a recent phenomenon, think again.
It happened during another turbulent era in finance: The 1901 takeover battle over the Northern Pacific railroad, perhaps the fiercest such contest in U.S. history.
Tim Geithner must go (Bloomberg)
No, he must stay (Barron's)
The Phantom Menace (New York Times) Yes, Paul Krugman is still calling for more stimulus:
Now, it's politically difficult for the Obama administration to enact a full-scale second stimulus. Still, he should be trying to push through as much aid to the economy as possible. And remember, Mr. Obama has the bully pulpit; it's his job to persuade America to do what needs to be done.
Instead, however, Mr. Obama is lending his voice to those who say that we can't create more jobs.
What if your boss asks for your DNA? (NPR)
The school's policy seems to violate the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), says Susannah Baruch of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University.
"Most generally," she says, "GINA prohibits health insurers and employers from using your genetic information against you."
Reuters is reporting that JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon is seen as <a href="http://tinyurl.com/yezwnpr">a likely successor to Geithner</a>. I'm speechless.
Here's the NY Post <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/polishing_dimon_IKfyRK8PArjjlMYflW... target="_blank">article</a>.
First Paulson and GS got a turn at the trough, now Dimon & JPM Chase. I heard they preferred Madoff over Dimon, but they were worried he might have too little credibility with the public...
I think the most telling line of Mr. Tamney's article is: "To suggest that traders don't do society a great service is to say that prices don't most efficiently organize any economy." He then puts up a straw man of the soviet union as the single model of all nay-sayers.
I still consider myself a strong capitalist, but this is precisely the debate that should be before us. If price were infallible, we wouldn't be in this situation, so the question now is there anything that can function better than what we are doing now, and what does it look like?
