Volcker: U.S. needs more civil engineers and fewer financial engineers

Mr Greenspan goes to Washington. But Mr Greenspan is not as naive as Jimmy Stewart in his Mr. Smith movie. Something is very wrong here. ....................

http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/10/23/mr-greenspan-goes-to-washington-shock-and-disbelief/

we can forget greed......always a leading edge against common functional sense... and now the greed taints and corrupts and destroys... the eyes in position of leadership can only see what they can grab and couldn't choose to understand how this will effect those in the mainstream.... the overall system manipulates and using fear and greed like twin dragons...

Well said...feel sorry for the guy that wins in Nov.

Volker's words are prophetic. As a former securitization recruiter, over the years I have been stunned by the number top engineering school grads who have diverted from true careers in engineering and science to pursue financial engineering.

Hopefully, top high school grads and those pursuing grad degrees will look at careers with longterm staying power in science and real engineering specialities instead of the short-term academic specialty of financial engineering.

Leave it to the old buzzard to outline succulently our universal problem, the top 1% taking all the profits and not returning to the kitty for all to benefit,
Thanks to Ronnie RAYGUN, George Bush1, and no the monkey puppet George Shrub 2 we are where we are at due to their pandereing to the rich and the corporations.

Volcker states the problem now its up to us to remedy the situation. turn the kleptomaniacs and their adherents out of office

So basically, paraphrasing the way conservatives like to say there are too many lawyers, I guess there are too many bankers! Sounds about right.

I feel there needs to be more focus on this subject at the collegiate level. Too many students are encouraged to go for the big bucks instead of using their intelligence for the greater good.

You dont need more engineers unless you decide to build here in the U.S. again and not ship the work to countries where an engineer is paid $3K per year... or allow the countries we charge 2.2. percent tarrifs to, to charge us 22.5% tarriffs..like China does.

We can only place 25% of our graduating engineers and scientist now. Educating more workers is not an answer if the work can flow overseas. Georgia tech can not place its engineers other than civil.

Regards

The idea of the article is to use the engineers to rebuild America. I'm sure Volker has had a lot to do with Obama's plan to put people to work rebuilding the infrastructure and developing a green economy.

This would be a tremendous investment in our country and would start to put our economy back on track.

This is why we need banks that are owned by the people. We need to have more of our money invested in America. The private sector won't do this on their own, and they certainly won't do it by hiring Americans, paying a decent wage and not overcharging for the work.

This is the plan for the next 8 years folks. Get used to the idea.

I saw the Volcker - Rose interview and when he said that, it struck me as poignant. See, I am one of those engineers he is talking about. I've been out of school for 4 years now, but I can remember vividly the grueling job search process. While exploring post college, I noticed that there was only two main industries hiring, weapons and finance.

Regarding the first, I made a pledge through about midway through studies that I would never use my skills to create something that's sole purpose was to destroy. Second, I wanted to work on producing real things, not manipulating money. The finance industry would go after electrical and computer engineers like me because of our skills transfer well over to the financial industry; because to us it is just another model.

Final point, there are more people out there like me. We want to produce things. The biggest satisfactions I get in my career are seeing something I helped create. I want to use my skills to produce something that will improve people's lives. And it has been DAMN frustrating witnessing this country's utter complete lack of value in that. The people are out there.

The real problem isn't the lack of engineers willing to do the work. Like I said above, we are out there salivating for the projects. The problem lies within ourselves and our twisted value system.

What's to debate? Instead of higher wages the corporatists led by Greenspan using ever lower interest rates permitted the proletariat to spend their seed money (equity) on shiny new play things.

Then the seed money ran out and this fact coupled with the fact that the fields no longer produced free grain - oh well - hello depressionville.

Reminds me of the mid-west dust bowl of the late 20's early 30's (last century). Gee maybe we'll get a brand new Woody Guthrie to sing a few songs about it.

You want a solution? Buckle down, start saving and maybe your grandchildren will be able to get out from under. Folks - we haven't seen anything yet - the last 16 years of our economy has been funded by a dream. Now there is no money left, the shiny new play things have rusted and the best jobs are going to be repoman and debt collector.

Any financial engineers care to apply?

Entrepreneurs who get to IPO (most don't) typically own about 9% of the companies they have founded. Most of the rest of the equity goes to venture capitalists, private equity investors etc. It's easy to see where the incentives for innovation lie and why the financial sector attracts so much scarce talent at the expense of the rest of the economy.

The Market is jittery at the moment. Toxic investment instruments , wrong decisions,bad investments, economic downturn, uncertainty in the housing markets,collapse of financial institutions,oil demands declining,political uncertainty and draw out money now and keep it at home strategy etc etc underlines the gravity of market outlook.

To get the economy moving again will take a miracle.

Volcker has always been the best of the best and the wisest of the wise--the polar opposite of the Ayn Rand nuttiness of Alan Greenspan, described to me recently by a certified investment genius as "one of the greatest CRIMINALS in history," whose name will live in infamy forever. Volcker is always focused on the fundamentals, and he's right that this country has totally lost its way. We've been clueless about the nuts and bolts in our heedless pursuit of greed and "easy" money. Meanwhile, India and China, who'll soon bury us, are rolling out millions and millions of first-rate engineers, scientists, IT geniuses, and mathematicians, year after relentless year, while our students are simply way too lazy and besotted by our dumb youth culture to study hard enough to keep up with them in the "boring" areas on which national success or failure depend. It's way too late to actually turn around our ship of state, which is much too small to compete with India and China in any case. Obama will be an excellent manager of our decline, unlike Bush and McCain would have and would simply shove us closer to the edge of our national cliff.

As someone who just earned a PhD in Biochemistry I studied, worked, and sacrificed my twenties to be told I can be a postdoc for the next 6 years and make about 40. Wow, thanks a lot! It's not that students are lazy it's that there is no reward for hard work. Nothing is valued in this country besides finance. So anyone who creates anything can not even afford to buy their own creation.

I'm now back in school for Landscape Architecture. I figure if I'm going to make peanuts I should at least enjoy the job. I also feel the path to the future is to redesign America and create a clean and efficient infrastructure. The masses of highways and sprawl made by civil engineers is not sustainable. Designing right would lower the consumption of most Americans and allow us to spend money on things besides oil.

I'm sure no one will listen and things will remain the same. However, as a Landscape Architect I should be able to be employed overseas in countries who value civic beauty and not just the financial portfolio.

America has lost it's way. Reagan through Bush II have stolen the dream and we let it happen.

Lets not stop at the shift to more engineers. I advocate that all publically funded state colleges pull all financial support from their law faculties and shift it 100% into their schools of medicine. We need more Doctors and we have too many Lawyers!!

If lawyers want to get a degree let them pay the entire cost of their education while we increase our support to the medical professions.

The amount liberal mumbo jumbo and anti-Republican hyperbole on this sight is both comical and disturbing. Finance is, has always been and always will be the profession that drives business investment, technological advancement, and economic growth. There is no need for mechanical engineers, civil engineers and the like if projects can't be financed. The financial engineers make the other engineering professions possible.