Escaping from the City

I might sound naive and not very cool but this week I am going to post something which has taken my attention in the last week.The article I am posting, taken from the online edition of the financial times, it is connected to our topic, even though it is not directly a story of excellence.
I found it very interesting and inspiring and reflects a feeling that I have been cultivating inside me during my studies in the Uk.
It is a very nice consideration about the aims of young graduates and their future prospectives.
The author meets my idea of a productive world, filled with dedication and passion for what someone is doing and not merely passion for money.
Also, in times where everything it is becoming fast and leading to major problems (see the financial crisis and the subprime crunch) I think it would be good if young smart graduates moved back to create new product and services that make people feel and live better.
Creating a new company, creating new products and services is driven by energy and passion and not by greed.
Greed, together with trend is probably one of the major causes at the roots of the financial crisis.

The financial crisis has given us the chance to think and make serious reasoning about what really matters. I am not claiming that the whole financial system is wrong and I am not saying that financial services are not useful for the economy. Venture capitalists and banks can often be the trigger to transform outstanding entrepreneurial ideas into reality. What, in my opinion, has been underestimated is once again the persuasive power of money on the human nature. Human beings, as Francis Bacon used to say, are greedy and care mostly about their selves. After all, Smith and Marx, even if from different perspectives, had predicted this.

Education is at the basis and how young minds are formed and educated is crucial for our future.

I found really sad how in our society greed has been inspired and publicized; big Wall Street fish acting like divas, incompetent managers dropping their company in terrible conditions and pop out with millionaire bonuses are examples on how the social problem has been underestimated in the past.
But problems have to be solved at the beginning and that's why this article is very inspiring...


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A wise fellow recently gave me his explanation for the financial crisis: too many highly intelligent graduates went to work in the investment banks on Wall Street and in the City. I know what he means: such characters were too clever by half, pushing securitisation, derivatives, swaps and a plethora of financial instruments to such excess that they almost destroyed capitalism.

All that concentrated brainpower focused on one thing: making as much money as they could as quickly as possible. The legions of high-flyers with PhDs and MBAs queueing up to get jobs in financial markets had worked out a basic truth: the closer you are to the money, the easier it is to get rich.

They are right, of course. Doing tedious things such as inventing real products, manufacturing goods and providing genuine services for a profit is hard work and takes time. It requires travel to savage places with industrial estates, many miles from the money centres full of skyscrapers. Whereas if you just manipulate vast sums of money – via shares, bonds, options or even more complicated and obscure securities – you just have to shave off a tiny fraction from each trade, and pretty soon you’re raking in billions.

I hope ordinary citizens do not confuse such would-be financial geniuses with real entrepreneurs. I chaired a Prince’s Trust discussion last week with about 50 of the genuine article. They confirmed that they build companies because they have a dream, a desire to serve customers, see an idea become tangible, beat the competition and myriad other reasons – but that cash is rarely the chief driver. They are passionate and proud about the company – profit is a byproduct; they gain their fulfilment by seeing their creation grow.

But if you are an ambitious employee in the money business, how else do you measure success except with money? Moreover, if entrepreneurs speculate, they tend to use their own resources and suffer the consequences when it goes wrong. But when Stan O’Neal destroyed Merrill Lynch, Fred Goodwin blew up RBS, Joe Cassano obliterated AIG, and Dick Fuld led Lehmans to bankruptcy, it was taxpayers who had to fork out hundreds of billions to deal with the mess. A peculiar form of hubris must infect the bosses of major financial institutions. Let us hope that cohort of financial bosses is never replicated. Banks should not be left under the supervision of gunslingers whose sole objective is money; they should be managed by conservative stewards who are prudent rather than adventurous.

Having worked in the City of London for a few years in the 1980s, my experience was that financial services can get very boring. This is not a bad thing – too much excitement at a bank is dangerous. I suspect quite a few bankers are frustrated in their jobs and are almost ashamed of what they do; they comfort themselves with huge salaries and bonuses, grand houses and luxurious holidays. This is the compensation for working in giant, highly regulated corporations that have no end-product except money. Secretly, I’m sure many of the highly educated, cultured participants would rather be spending their career in something more constructive – perhaps making bridges or cars or writing software. But, sadly, real engineering does not pay as well as financial engineering.

We should all hope that the pendulum has now swung away from high finance, and that very few of our brightest degree holders want to apprentice at Goldman Sachs. No doubt the rewards are still better there, but the reputation of the Masters of the Universe is not as glorious as it was. Of course we still need banks and stock markets and the other elements of the financial system. I don’t want to demonise the Square Mile and Wall Street. But we must ensure that not too many of the best young talents end up there. There should be a wholesale rebalancing towards other occupations – mainstream industry, in particular – by the brightest from our top universities. Last week I hosted my old college reception, and was encouraged when I met final year students. Working in an investment bank is no longer seen by them as sexy. This is great news.

source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e55b9422-ec35-11df-9e11-00144feab49a.html#axzz14tuIaXrN