Everyone Hates Harvard 348
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."
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
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The others who mis-times shouldn't be in jail because THEY were lucky enough to fail.
Somebody who fails to steal something isn't a thief, doesn't mean somebody who is a thief should get to walk too.
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No, it says right in the summary that the banks' decision to bundle sub-prime mortgages into complex derivatives that, on paper, had low probabilities of failing but that, in total, created systemic risk that far outweighed the risk associated with any single mortgage bundle. He knew that presenting it in a certain way would enable him to sell the idea.
He's nothing more than a common crook, peddling dream scams to the public. Just because his marks were supposedly informed investors does not change the fact
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He knew that presenting it in a certain way would enable him to sell the idea.
That doesn't make it a crime any more than selling lottery tickets is a crime. Except the chance of losing your money is higher when you play the lottery.
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Yes, the operative words being "your money".
As distinctly opposed to losing banks' customers' money and then a giant pile of taxpayers' money.
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He knew that presenting it in a certain way would enable him to sell the idea.
That doesn't make it a crime any more than selling lottery tickets is a crime. Except the chance of losing your money is higher when you play the lottery.
Selling "numbers" is a crime. It's only state sanctioned numbers game called "lottery" is legal.
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He may not be a good guy, but it wasn't stealing.
Except he was a good guy. By betting against the overvaluation of the housing market, he was helping to pull it back down to sustainable levels. If more people did what he did, the financial crisis would have been less severe, fewer people would have lost their jobs, and maybe no bailout would have been needed.
Bets on a fixed fight don't make you a good guy... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.deepcapture.com/201... [deepcapture.com]
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.
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Despite what the summary says, he didn't create the problem. He recognized it and took a position. He may not be a good guy, but it wasn't stealing.
Too bad his "position" wasn't one of trying to help avoid/solve the problem rather than getting even more rich from exploiting it - a person with all his education, resources and such - but I guess the Wall Street mantra "I'm getting mine, fuck everyone else" was too strong for him. Maybe he didn't steal money (directly) but this kind of behavior is, let say, socioeconomic theft - unless he took those gains and did some actual good with it, did I miss something?
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
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So it's fine to be part of the problem as long as you don't break a law?
Great, so everyone abusing social security (within the legal limits, just not within its intended function) is off the hook now and no longer a despicable sponge but actually a shrewd businessman!
We should bail them out, don't you think? Let's all give them a hand.
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Why don't you offer an example of this legal abuse, and a cite for "its intended function"?
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So it's fine to be part of the problem as long as you don't break a law?
Whether or not it's "fine," we absolutely should not jail people who don't break the law. Doing so is going down a very, very dangerous road.
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Yes, if a person acts lawfully, no matter how despicable you think his acts might be, it is still lawful. Change the law to make his acts unlawful and wait for him to violate those laws. That is what it means to be free. To be able to do anything you want lawfully unless a law passed making it unlawful.
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The claim that the "one percenters" is a fixed group, passing wealth from generation to generation, is a fraud. As reported in the Jun 8, 2015 issue of Investor's Business Daily, between 60% and 72% of the Forbes 400 list change over a period of 32 years (not just individuals, families.) The same principle applies to the top 1% as applies to the top 400.
Assuming a person is not manifestly mentally defective, anyone can achieve great wealth and power. People who are noxious, malignant, vicious, underhanded,
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Well, they can have a chance at it, granted, but there are lots of dedicated people who aren't wealthy.
Partial Truth (Score:3, Insightful)
He didn't con an old lady out of her savings; he made a bet with banks and other investors who should have known better.
Not entirely correct. If he is the architect behind the subprime mortgages then he did not directly con an old lady out of her savings but his actions indirectly wiped half the value off those savings. He deliberately designed an extremely risky investment vehicle to look to the banks like a low risk, high return investment and they did not spot the trick. It might have been entirely legal but it bears all the hall marks of a con and in such a case, while the mark takes some blame for letting their greed o
Re:Partial Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Partial Truth (Score:4, Informative)
He isn't. He told everyone that the subprime mortgages were worthless, then put his money where his mouth was. He shorted the market and got rich.
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The stock exchange isn't supposed to be a casino. It's supposed to be a place where you can buy and sell equity in other companies. Not a place to bet on outcomes of companies which you don't actually own.
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But that does not absolve him of the crime of selling something that he knew to be less valuable than the person he was selling it to.
I guess we should send you to idiot jail then for that sentence was a crime against reason. There is no crime here and hence, no need for absolution.
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How is betting against someone and winning theft?
There's a lot to be angry about in the GFC, but one person being smart enough to predict it and bet against it is not it.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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No, it is neither fraud nor morally questionable. To the contrary, if more people had done what he did, the housing bubble wouldn't have grown as big and the crash wouldn't have been as bad.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
The "fraud nor morally questionable" part comes from the fact that they were actively advising people to invest one way so that they could invest the other.
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It may be "morally questionable", but that's not the issue. It's not fraud to advise people to do things against their own interest. And it doesn't change the fact that if more people had done what he did, the real estate bubble would have been less severe.
"Paid shills"? Sigh... (Score:2)
Wow, look at all the paid shills...
If you think anyone in the finance industry gives a rat's ass about rantings on slashdot then you are delusional. Go ahead and vent - I might even agree with you. But let's not pretend what we say here has much consequence in the real world.
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And by "paid shills" you mean people like yourself, deeply steeped in a culture of government-supported educational institutions and government-funded projects?
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Re:Why? (Score:4)
He did not do any of that. The summary is inflammatory flamebait. If you click on the link, you get a WSJ article [wsj.com] that actually contradicts the summary (welcome to New Slashdot).
The WSJ story is very clear about what Paulson did: he noticed that subprime lending was out of control, and that the standard "insurance" against bad bets (CDS) was absurdly under-priced. Note: this basically means that the Big Banks (*not* Paulson) were throwing money left and right to the subprime lenders, blind to the risks.
So he bought a lot of CDS, and when the bubble crashed, he profited massively. The End.
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There is no benefit to the society. Not only did the banks make bad decisions, it even gave banks the opportunity to create money out of nothing, by accepting the bet that the housing market would not collapse.
This system accelerated the housing bubble because banks kept on seeing double digit percentages by winning bets until they lost one bet and saw their system collapse. We wouldn't have heard of John Paulson if he would have made the bet a few weeks/months earlier because he would have lost his stake.
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So why should he be in jail?
He was in an inherent conflict of interest. That's the illegal part.
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He has money. We don't lock up our royalty!
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He has money. We don't lock up our royalty!
He has money he must be guilty of something / sarcasm
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Since it has become pretty much impossible to get rich by working, you might be onto something...
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Such ignorance, masquerading as jaded sophistication.
Just because you're a loser doesn't mean everyone is.
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He hasn't bought a law yet that he broke.
Actually, he did. http://www.deepcapture.com/?s=... [deepcapture.com]
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the only thing that you can criticize Paulson over is that he likes to keep his strategies close to his chest.
He had his own company with investors that specifically had to toe the line when it came to Paulson's strategies. A lot of them bailed. He really made out by the skin of his teeth since timing was everything (he had enormous notes due with not all that much capital). He is under absolutely no onus to 'tell everybody' his investment strategies.
BTW, he did alert the SEC because he felt the banks were pulling an egregiously illegal stunt (basically they were making money out of thin air). The SEC didn't ha
Link summary wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
My usual gut instinct is to think that many Wall St. guys are just greedy assholes, rigging the system for more profit. But quite often once you think about the economics of what some of them have done, it's not always quite that simple. Many of them actually see the broken basic economics on an institutional level and actually end up exploiting nothing other than the institutional greed and myopia of Wall Street.
It doesn't work that way (Score:2)
Many of them actually see the broken basic economics on an institutional level and actually end up exploiting nothing other than the institutional greed and myopia of Wall Street.
What? No. It doesn't work that way. When the Wall Streeters exploit someone and make money, other people have to suffer. It's a negative-sum game when we let them play at all.
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What? No. It doesn't work that way. When the Wall Streeters exploit someone and make money, other people have to suffer. It's a negative-sum game when we let them play at all.
Except, of course, for the many situations when that isn't true. Wall Street businesses are like used car salesmen. You have to do your homework. But if you do so, then they can be worth the trouble.
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Except, of course, for the many situations when that isn't true. Wall Street businesses are like used car salesmen.
What, even if they don't fuck you over, they'll still try to fuck over the next guy?
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They are greedy assholes. Even Adam Smith recognized that. The insight Smith had that greedy assholes actually produce beneficial outcomes for society.
"The system" is the set of laws, rules, and regulations that govern Wall Street. Greedy Wall Street assholes can try to rig these in their favor, but whether they succeed is ultimately only up to our elected officials. And that kind of "rigging"
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Not if they can help it. When they can get away with it, they produce terrible outcomes for society. Ironically, it was a lot harder for them to get away with it before everyone started parroting Adam Smith for Dummies as tautological.
Turns out Adam Smith's insight lacked an intriguing quality of meta-robustness. When you feed it back into the system as an assumption, as we started to do beginning with the Reagan
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Turns out Adam Smith's insight lacked an intriguing quality of meta-robustness. When you feed it back into the system as an assumption, as we started to do beginning with the Reaganâ"Thatcherâ"Greenspanâ"Rand cult, it ceases to remain valid.
Or we could say that the above didn't happen. It's worth noting here that the "cult" resulted in the US picking up after the stagflation of the 70s to the point that Japan suddenly ceased to be a problem (you might recall the Japanese scare of the 80s when everyone was afraid that Japan would end up controlling the US or whatnot. When Japan had a recession and tepid recovery while the US grew substantially in the mid 90s (on top of good growth throughout the 80s), suddenly those fears went away.
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Really? Can you construct a logical argument why it should lack "meta robustness"?
No, you find yourself underwriting a trilli
Capitalism is like nuclear power (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Even free markets need some rules (Score:3)
Just because you think of it as an out-of-control chain reaction doesn't make it so. In fact, free markets are exactly the opposite: market mechanisms give you negative feedback, not positive feedback.
Please point out a single example of an unregulated free market that has never collapsed.
As Milton Friedman put it, your fallacy is that you assume that "government is a way that you put unselfish and un-greedy men in charge of selfish and greedy men."
You must be a conservative if you are quoting Friedman. Your fallacy is that you assume greedy men will work to the benefit of society when unconstrained by rule of law. I have centuries of evidence on my side that illustrates the fallacy of that notion. A reasonable amount of regulation is necessary for markets to function. As I said previously there can be too much regulation just as there can be too little. The
Re:Link summary wrong (Score:4, Informative)
The article does not say that he did that.
Paulson did in fact do that. The Abacus deal [reuters.com] was considered fairly controversial.
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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.
Good summary of what happened. he bet against stupidity, and won. Now he gets to do what he wants with his money.
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Anybody who bought those should be in prison for insurance fraud.
There was nothing fraudulent about the transactions.
You can't take insurance on things you don't own specifically because of this kind of scenario.
Yes, you can. Fraud only occurs when you promise not to do that and then do it. When you didn't promise anything, then there is nothing to be fraudulent about.
The reason why the credit default swaps caused that problem was specifically because there were multiple policies being sold on the same securities and nobody knew who owned what.
No, it was the ability to borrow $50 on $1 collateral. The above behavior is a final warning sign that you need to get out of the market now. Risk blindness to the point of not even caring if you can show ownership is a bad sign.
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However, if the paper is not based on fundamental values, it's basically fraud.
"IF". How do we know what the paper is worth? The process by which a payout is determined is the fundamental value.
Allowing people to bet on destruction of other people's values, property and lives create endemic systemic risk.
It also reduces endemic systemic risk. How much it helps or harms depends on how big the stakes are. The thing to note here is that Paulson's stake never grew large enough that it was worth it for him to rig the odds.
So is continuing the practice of private banks, the type of banks that now has a proven track-record of incompetence and bad-intent while getting social welfare in the form of unsustainable bail-outs ("too big to fail").
The central banks also shared in this track record, let us note. I agree that the practice needs to end, but the use of the term, "private" indicates to me that you are missing imp
Big endowment (Score:4, Interesting)
Big endowment schools are simply not the most effective place to donate. If you have a lot of money and it's really where you want to give--or more likely if you're trying to buy someone's way in--sure, nothing's stopping you from donating. But if your goal is improvement of almost anything, it's just dumb.
Donate $1/year to keep up your alumni participation numbers, which influences the ratings of your school and the value of your degree. Aside from that, give someplace where the dollars are more effective.
If you are going to give to a school, give to a school that does a lot of public interest work but has a low endowment-per-capita. (Georgetown Law comes to mind, for example--a law school with a strong public interest program and a small endowment per capita).
If you are going to give to to another non-for-profit, look for direct aid dollars. Better yet, look at the Gates foundation or the like--the people who are spending billions and their life's fortune on this hire pretty good people to run it, aiming at maximizing long-term benefit. That is kind of awesome. Leverage their investment to direct your own. Picking a charity on your own is *hard*--too many are scams or mismanaged.
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Better yet, look at the Gates foundation or the like
Yes, just look at the Gates foundation. [latimes.com] Everything about it is wonderful [nytimes.com]. How quickly they forget that Bill Gates stole that money. Microsoft was convicted of abusing its monopoly position and general anticompetitive behavior. Then Bush's dog Ashcroft, in control of the DoJ, let them off with a warning. Not even a handslap. Microsoft is part of the evil that is buying and selling this country, and Bill Gates was chief presiding evil bastard. You really think he's changed? Guess what, the Gates Foundation i
Harvard is a red herring. (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you take that bait, you're a sap.
The problem is that the banking system has been rigged in order to socialize risk. This guy exploited that fact, realized he made more money than an individual human being could possibly amuse himself with and decided to dispose of a big chunk of that were it might do a little good.
People are shouting "Harvard! Harvard! Harvard!" because they don't want you to think about the rigged banking system. They'd rather focus any anti-elitist backlash on intellectuals.
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Many folks saw the meltdown coming. The Economist got into a famous argument with Freddie and Fannie when in the mid-00's, they published articles about how the their lending was unsustainable, fraught with risk, and headed towards economic disaster.
I would have loved to have done what Paulson did but I just do not know that people who have the capital to invest. Paulson did. And how did he meet those people and get the hedge fund job? By going to Harvard. Hedge Funds and others actively recruit from that
Re:Harvard is a red herring. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I don't hate Harvard. (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate the useless spongers it creates.
Don't give money to your alma mater. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
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Try your local community college to get the most educational bang for the buck.
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they could quite literally abolish tuition forever if they wanted to.
You know that essentially they have, right? You pay a much as you can reasonably afford.
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You'd think, but Texas A&M is in the top ten. Probably because a fair number of Texas oilmen are football fans.
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Wow, that was the most condescending post ever. Not only am I well aware of how an endowment is operated -- this is a regular topic of faculty meetings, for god's sake -- my earlier post did assume only investment income was spent. A 3.5% return on Harvard's 1.7 million per student endowment would give an annual income of $60,000, which is equal to Harvard's tuition plus room and board. Historical rates of return for the last couple centuries are significantly higher than 3.5%, which would likely allow
So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, its like I tell my kids. You can do what you want, but you have the take the consequences. In this case one of the consequences is that people think he is a cunt.
WAGE GAP (Score:2, Insightful)
Its time for quality education to go to kids that deserve it.
Everyone hates the 1% (Score:2)
non-notable chair of expelled air (Score:2)
I take a lot of notes in my own personal wiki. For general knowledge subjects, I often copy a few paragraphs from the Wikipedia lead, and then trim it down to just the bits I care to remember.
There's a few things that I almost always redact from articles concerning people: Day and month of birth. Nobility and rank. (Even FRS.) These blatantly elitist and self-promotional Seminal J. J. Tractatus or Timothy Erasamus Highbrow or Jagadish Q. Deepocket professorships. (I even trim mention of the Lucasian C
Re: Harvard is the right place (Score:2, Insightful)
Harvard is the place those mass-murdering politicians go. It doesn't turn them into it. They were on the road to it long before going there, and continued that path afterwards. It's just one of the steps in that career path.
Harvard (and the ivies in general) are not the places where the best students go. They are the places where the most spoiled, stuck up, rich little bastards who don't mind cheating and manipulating others to get ahead go to master their craft.
Re:Harvard is the right place (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: Harvard is the right place (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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Neither, mass murderers get into Yale on their own but leave before graduation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org], then get a Skull and Bones-er to do his will.
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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?
Not Al Gore, given that he went to Harvard, not Yale [biography.com].
Re: Harvard is the right place (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Harvard is the right place (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Harvard is the right place (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: Harvard is the right place (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You really need to check your biases.
There was an 11 year hunt for Bin Laden, But your going to assign all the credit to the guy who happened to be there at the end ?
Solved the wars
I love your use of the word solved. It's like solving power consumption issues with grenades.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Was there? The whole thing was classified at best. Keep in mind that Bush explicitly stated that he dhttp://news.slashdot.org/story/15/06/07/0313256/everyone-hates-harvard#idn't care about Osama anymore, once he got into Iraq.
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You really need to check your biases.
There was an 11 year hunt for Bin Laden, But your going to assign all the credit to the guy who happened to be there at the end ?
Your biases are just as bad.
The hunt for Bin Laden started in '98. He died in '11. That's a 13-year-hunt. But you don't like Clinton, so you don't want to credit him for being the only one who took Osama seriously before S11.
And yes, I'm going to give full credit to the guy who actually finished the job. The previous two guys can get some partial credit (especially Clinton, because at the time his hunt for Bin laden was widely derided by everyone on both sides as the equivalent of Ahab going after the White
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
For most of the 11 years absolutely fuck-all happened. We can say this with certainty because it's now been revealed that Bin Laden's 'fortress' was actually a Pakistani-controlled compound in which Bin Laden was under house arrest. So basically, Bin Laden spent the first 5 or 6 years roaming free in Afghanistan to do anything he wanted, then sought shelter in Pakistan for several more years until some people in the Pakistani government got tired of it all and tipped off the US. Then Obama staged this hilar
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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Re: Harvard is the right place (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Writing a letter to a foreign power undermining an on-going presidential negotiation.
That is unconstitutional and specifically an act of treason as defined in the Logan Act, which declares it treason for any American citizen (that includes senators) to make any contact whatsoever with a foreign power while that power is in negotiations with the president.
The law does however recognize that this particular form of high treason isn't as damaging as some of the others, which is why the prescribed sentence is o
Re:It's been pretty strongly demonstrated... (Score:5, Informative)
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... [forbes.com]
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".
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It's pointless, uninteresting, completely outside of "news for nerds and stuff that matters"...
Fits perfectly with /., I agree.
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Wow, you sure pay a lot of attention to these groups.
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Everyone doesn't hate Harvard. We hate being screwed over by people whose parents paid for them to go to Harvard and who think that manipulating markets to their own advantage and ruining the economy fur their own gain is a God-given right.
Yeah, those damn engineers screwing people over...
I don't blame people for their parents being rich. I do blame parents who send their kids to expensive schools.
If the overall level of engineering education rises as a result of this gift, great!
We don't get to decide what others donate to. Bitch too much about their giving, and they'll just stop giving, and that's not an improvement.
Have you willingly donated to a poorer engineering school lately?
Harvard engineering (Score:5, Informative)
Is Harvard known for engineering?
Short answer is yes. They have a rather distinguished [harvard.edu] 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.
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If you've got some bitcoin you can probably get some smuggled haggis on tor.
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The reason you can't make the same bets Paulson can make is because "consumer protection laws" "protect" you from taking these kinds of risks. And make no mistake, Paulson's bets were very risky for him.
Whether those consumer protection laws and regulations are a good thing or not depends on whether you're more concerned about gullible small investors gambling away their nestegg, or smart small investors being prevented from participating in
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If only the Cambridge, MA area had an acceptable engineering school....