As with the last time I did this, I'll post the links to the relevant articles, give a quick blurb with my thoughts on the link (or links), and you can choose whether or not you're interested enough to read the whole piece. I enjoyed all of them thoroughly.
It's harder to get a job at Walmart than it is to be admitted to an Ivy League school
Jerry Shenk; American Thinker
Jerry Shenk notes that while acceptance rates are extremely low at Ivy League schools--6.9% at Harvard, 8.2% at Princeton, 11.5% at Dartmouth--these rates are nothing compared to hiring rates at many midwestern Walmarts. One Cleveland-area store reported a hiring rate of only 5% (6,000 applicants for only 300 jobs), whereas the sheer number of applications was staggering at a pair of Chicago-area stores--15,000 and 20,000 total applications, for reportedly similar numbers of jobs to the Cleveland store.
Shenk notes that 2% fewer college graduates received jobs in 2010 than 2009, which no doubt means that the Class of 2011 will be fighting with a few long-term unemployed graduates when they leave their campuses after graduation this month. That's not good for them, and it's certainly not good for our nation's colleges (Ivy League schools included). Who would bother going through the arduous application process, spending four years at college, and taking on over $100,000 in debt if there's no jobs available on the back end? Why not just throw your hat in the ring at the local Walmart and get a head start on the game?
The People vs. Goldman Sachs
Matt Taibbi; Rolling Stone
Goldman Viewed Unfavorably by 54% as Poll Shows No Damage
Christine Harper; Bloomberg
As Wall Street Firms Grow, Their Reputations are Dying
Steven M. Davidoff; New York Times
These stories are all closely related, and frankly they deserve their own post (especially the Taibbi piece, but that's true about almost every Taibbi piece). But I could honestly write for days about this issue, and I've been consistently too lazy or too busy to give this one the time it deserves. So rather than let it go entirely unaddressed, I'll address it here. Ultimately, the point is that there is an extreme divergence at present between the profitability of the banks (particularly Goldman Sachs) and their general reputation. Almost everyone hates the banks, but they just keep on printing money.
Several reasons are given for this divergence, especially in Davidoff's NY Times article. But I think the explanations all basically miss the point. The point is, this is what happens in bailed-out industries. Companies who don't need to worry about failing also don't really need to worry about customer service. What's happened with airlines in the last 20+ years is now happening with banks. With unconditional federal support, there is no longer any incentive to do things properly or in a way that keeps your customers happy. That's why we all hate airlines, and it's why we're all beginning to hate banks, and it won't change until our federal government decides that it's going to stop bailing out failed companies and failed industries.
As for Goldman, they'll just keep on stealing until somebody decides that they've stolen too much. I'm not holding my breath.
Library of Congress Revives Thousands of Vintage Recordings
Caroline Cooper; WQXR.org
The National Jukebox, a project launched last week by the Library of Congress, has compiled more than 10,000 rare and previously unavailable recordings of music, speeches, and comedy acts (all of it recorded between 1901 and 1925) into a free streaming database. Also known as: Ken Burns' wet dream.
I think it's a pretty cool use of the internet (along the lines of yesterday's super-nerdy interactive solar system post). Some of the stuff is actually really fun to mess around with, even if there is enough old-timey ragtime music on there to make me feel like I'm walking around inside an early Mickey Mouse cartoon. Good work, Library of Congress.
Opinion: The Auto Industry Bailout - Still Debated But Worth Every Penny
David Kiley; AOL Autos
GM's Profits are Still a Huge Net Loss For Taxpayers
Megan McArdle; The Atlantic
Another pair of related articles, this time with drastically opposing viewpoints. From my discussion above about Goldman, you already know where I come down on bailouts of all kinds, but that's hardly the point.
The point here is that the true costs and true benefits of any of these bailouts will only be known with the benefit of several decades of hindsight. Any attempt to write a post-mortem on these bailouts now is early at best, ignorant at worst. Note that the financial crisis of 2007-2008 had many of its roots in the fiscal and monetary response to 9/11, but we only fully appreciated those links nearly a decade later (and some of us still don't fully appreciate that dynamic). Therefore, to pretend that we can properly assess the long-term impacts of our bailout strategies at this point is foolhardy.
Of course, my greatest criticisms of the bailouts is that they sacrifice the long-term at the benefit of short-term stability, so maybe I'm just letting my own viewpoints here bias my reading of the articles in question. But I really do believe that we will only fully appreciate the impacts of these bailouts long after any of us has stopped thinking about them. That's what scares me.
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