Comments on economic education

http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/11/14/a-plea-for-economic-education/

One thing that often surprises people is the degree to which people working in Wall Street investment banks tend to not be “economic conservatives.” Investment banks are huge bureaucracies, and the people in them are generally not allergic to working in large bureaucracies. Also people who work on the raw edge of markets everyday see some of the limitations of said markets. Lots of Rubin Democrats in the banks.

People like George Soros and Warren Buffet have warned against market fundamentalism, and I don’t recall anyone out of a major Wall Street investment bank that has recently called for unfettered capitalism. (Hedge funds are different.)

One of the funny ironies involves sitting at a trading desk at the center of global capitalism, and going through a maddening socialist central-planning bureaucracy trying to get a phone installed.