Wall Street is Officially Over...The End!

[Miss Mia]

KoKo  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Sun Mar-08-09 05:30 PM
Original message
Wall Street is Officially Over...The End!
   
Edited on Sun Mar-08-09 05:34 PM by KoKo
The End
by Michael Lewis December 2008 Issue
The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.



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.


The crash did more than wipe out money. It also reordered the power on Wall Street.

Most economists predict a recovery late next year. Don’t bet on it.
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.

-SNIP- There's much more at the link - Miss Mia

DavidDvorkin  Donating Member  (1000+ posts)  Journal  Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Sun Mar-08-09 08:25 PM
Response to Original message
23. Nah. No more than the South Sea Bubble meant the end of the London exchange.

paulsby  (390 posts) Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Sun Mar-08-09 10:42 PM
Response to Reply #23
29. thank you
   
for once, some historical perspective.

people here are acting like financial crises, bubbles popping is something new and it's the END OF THE WORLD.

for those who study markets and history, and have a little historical perspective -

markets are forward looking price discovery mechanisms. the only way "it's over" is if the US economy is done with, and that is simply not the case.

don't get me wrong. we could have some nasty weather. heck, europe's got some right now too. and for pete's sake, look at the frigging EURO. the dollar is up hundreds of pips vs. the euro recently.

this is how markets work. it's not linear, it's chaotic.

but the longterm trend is up, because our economy builds wealth.

Fumesucker  Donating Member  (1000+ posts)  Journal  Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Mon Mar-09-09 08:56 AM
Response to Reply #29
43. Our economy builds wealth, eh?
   
I guess that all depends on your social level.

George II  (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Mon Mar-09-09 10:48 AM
Response to Original message
49. Wall Street isn't an "event", how could it be "OVER"????

havocmom  Donating Member  (1000+ posts)  Journal  Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Mon Mar-09-09 11:32 AM
Response to Reply #49
53. any entity weilding power has a lifespan, there for, it is an event
   
and this 'event' has been heading for a fatal crash for quite a while.

[Carl]

paulsby  (390 posts) Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Sun Mar-08-09 10:42 PM
Response to Reply #23
29. thank you
   
for once, some historical perspective.

people here are acting like financial crises, bubbles popping is something new and it's the END OF THE WORLD.

for those who study markets and history, and have a little historical perspective -

markets are forward looking price discovery mechanisms. the only way "it's over" is if the US economy is done with, and that is simply not the case.

don't get me wrong. we could have some nasty weather. heck, europe's got some right now too. and for pete's sake, look at the frigging EURO. the dollar is up hundreds of pips vs. the euro recently.

this is how markets work. it's not linear, it's chaotic.

but the longterm trend is up, because our economy builds wealth.

You will soon be receiving the memo to let you know you are far too rational for the DUmp.

[Splashdown]

They're so cute when they pretend to be economists.

Also, shouldn't people have a little skin in the game before they talk about things so far over their head?s

[The Village Idiot]

You will soon be receiving the memo to let you know you are far too rational for the DUmp.

Tombstone walking!