Re-Grooming the Elite

Two pieces on the crisis everyone should read. Of note, Simon Johnson in the Atlantic article talks about breaking the elite, and points to the view of Goldman Sachs as a training ground for public officials, especially in the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve System. But a deeper trace of where this elite originates from would lead Prof. Johnson no further than down the street from MIT.

It angers/saddens/confuses me when I still see posts on email lists at Harvard touting careers in finance. For my first 3 years here, "I-banking" was the field to go into, trumping any other high-minded goals one may have had pre-college. Much ink/bits have been spilled on the debate over the "right" career course for a Harvard graduate might be, and I'll give the Crimson a lot of credit for that (even if I'm too lazy to link to anything right now). I hope a more substantive and definitive answer to that debate will come out of this crisis. I hope my peers will realize they have a moral duty to look beyond their future big bonuses and payouts, and instead of becoming the fresh recruits of a moribund oligarchy, become dedicated to using their intelligence to transforming the way Wall Street does business.