Posted on 04/25/2009 2:30:28 PM PDT by Lorianne
The executives lining up early for an all-day job fair worked, or had worked, at investment banks, brokerages and hedge funds. Yet as they filed into the granite lobby of a midtown high-rise Friday, résumés in hand, they were not arriving to schmooze with representatives from Goldman Sachs or Blackstone.
No, these candidates -- some attending on the sly from their six-figure-salary jobs, concerned they might soon be out of work -- were eager to meet regulators and recruiters from 13 government agencies, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Such an early-morning turnout of several hundred people was emblematic of a single significant change: the degree to which financial power has recently shifted from Wall Street to Washington.
As thousands of New York's financial professionals have lost their jobs since the economic crisis began two years ago, many federal agencies -- backed by stimulus spending -- are in hiring mode for programs intended to help stimulate the economy. And the government increasingly is reaching into the private sector to fill its employment needs.
In hearings on the Hill, blame for the financial crisis has frequently been placed upon credit analysts, mortgage traders and MBAs. Yet now, instead of considering them part of the problem, government agencies hope they can be part of the solution.
Patrick Moynihan, a former junior trader on the mortgage desk at Citigroup before being laid off 10 months ago, listened intently to a recruiter from the FDIC.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I hope they check out the FBI and CIA!
I have witnessed the increased role of the public sector in composition of advisory boards to my business school. The advisory board for my area used to entirely private sector executives. Now a majority of the board are public sector executives. We are turning into a French nation in which government work is the most rewarding. The French are trying to move away from this model but we are moving to it in a large way.
When the best and the brightest want to be bureaucrats instead of businessmen or engineers or just about anything else, we’re screwed. We’re turning into something analogous to the old Soviet Union.
You might want to modify that statement...there is a long and noble tradition of the best and the brightest going into public service.
No, I don’t want to modify it. If we’re to the point where our smartest young people want to be regulators at the FDIC or similar agencies, we’re screwed.
What about if the smartest want to work for the state dept. or the military?
I’m not sure why you would be dismayed if smarter people were running our government
Have turned would be more truthful!!
The people I knew were mostly liberals actually...analytical but lacking in business experience. I was on the investment banking side of the business...I was not from a top school but was at the top of my class (first actually) at a second tier school (a public school).
There are brilliant young men and women on the public payroll who oppose those who plan to cheat the system. God bless them and their effort (Rudy Guiliani is one of them).
And there are brilliant young men and women who plan to use the free market system to accomplish those goals of greater productivity and higher performance...and God bless them.
It it the cheaters who must be removed (the Bernie Madoff's who steal the wealth of the hard earned).
The capitalist system works just fine for the most part...and any ideas of replacing it with a socialist system are misplaced.
Obama is a light-weight...he hasn't even managed a lemonade stand. He is floundering!!!
Although I completely agree with your statement, I disagree with the assumption that these Wall Street workers the article alludes to were in fact the "best and brightest" of anything. In my experience, a better description for these financial types might be the "most self-centered and ruthless." I am confident they will do equally well for themselves serving their new master.
And I’ll stick by claim that government service can be a noble undertaking (and no, I don’t work for the gubmint). And that means the military, as well as any number of other gubmint organizations, such as State Dept., Dept of Energy, etc. etc.
I’ve met many highly educated folks who have given up careers in the private sector because they wanted to serve their country.
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