PDA

View Full Version : Wall Street’s Fall: DoD’s Gain?



thedrifter
04-16-09, 09:09 AM
Wall Street’s Fall: DoD’s Gain?
April 16th, 2009

The past half year has seen a steady file of twenty-somethings streaming out of the Lincoln Tunnel and down I-95 to leave New York and the finance industry behind. Many of these bankers, hired predominantly during the post-2002 boom and now faced with the grim prospects of market correction, hold valuable technical degrees and have substantial professional experience. They are well-accustomed to an environment where near-thankless and endless work is the rule and not the exception, and they thrive in high-pressure, deadline-oriented scenarios. Furthermore and perhaps less well known, many of Wall Street’s newly-separated analysts and associates are athletic, suited to bureaucratic organizations and, importantly, patriotic. The present moment is replete with economic duress in New York that has thousands gazing toward the Beltway yearning for the stability of a public sector job. For now, many of New York’s Type-A fallen will settle into agency positions and of these, some will readily acclimate to a lifestyle that is the polar opposite of Wall Street. Others will find the tamer pace of the civil service to be frustrating and they will seek challenges in a new field.

On this, the Financial Times suggests that others of the Street’s number-crunchers will naturally flock to engineering and manufacturing where they can help build “real value”:

[The idea of decreased compensation] might horrify financiers. But it may also carry some seeds of hope. After all, if finance no longer keeps monopolising the brightest and best workers, some of that talent could be diverted into other, more productive, arenas – for the good of the economy… Some of those financiers now being “demobbed” – or sacked – have strong science or engineering backgrounds, and are sitting on spare capital. In an ideal world, they would be perfect candidates to support manufacturing, information technology or other high-tech start-ups of the kind that Europe in particular so desperately needs.

The attraction of technical work will be strong for many, but for an even greater number, liberal arts degrees will block out this option (economics, political science and history majors abound on Wall Street). These left over, lacking science backgrounds and queasy at the prospect of standard civil service, will be searching en masse for an outlet for their energies. Given this narrative, Bellum suggests that the armed forces will enjoy an unprecedented recruiting opportunity for the next 1-2 years, and by tweaking its marketing even slightly it could seize a significant share of one of the nation’s most valuable human capital segments.

To be sure, the excesses of the 2000s bull market warped priorities and instilled poor values in many aspirant Gen-Y financiers. Inebriated by stories of six-figure salaries for 22-year-olds, limos to and from work, free dinners and so on, finance’s bread and butter– ambitious males from the middle class– bought in to the system hook, line and sinker. As recruiters from bulge bracket banks rolled into campuses with fancy lox and bagel spreads and keychain-knickknack-graft, these driven students grew less likely to visit officer candidate school and ROTC websites and more likely to fill out applications for midtown firms and consulting shops. Some continued to harbor vague ideas about serving later on even after signing their prodigious contracts, but golden handcuffs made short work of any waffling.

A crass sort of individualism sometimes came to thrive in these circles that conceptualized public service as a betrayal of pure capitalism—economic principles that worked exceedingly well in the marketplace spilled over to dictate social norms. In the worst cases, workplace profitability determined comprehensive personal worth: “Service” was eschewed on the grounds that one was “too valuable” to deign to the military or to government life. Even those with engineering degrees often forewent intellectually stimulating jobs with NIH, DOE, etc., instead opting for quick paydays as “quants”. Bellum will remain non-critical in this instance because the employment decisions these people made were completely rational under the circumstances of an irrational economy. Selecting a commission over a Wall Street contract, while quite admirable, meant skipping out on an exciting career with which one could pay down all his debt in the space of months. Certainly, self-interest has never been the top priority of the military’s best recruits, but the recession calls for pragmatism that can accommodate those who would serve dutifully if called correctly.

In particular, the Marines have recently implemented ads that appeal greatly to the Wall Street mindset. The commercials are full of ethos, and they deliver clear evidence of rewards gained from sacrifice. Even so, Bellum suggests that the message could be further augmented by taking a page from Britain’s book to underscore direct responsibilities associated with work in the field. Tradition reigns supreme in US ads–while this theme resonates strongly, it is strengthened when coupled with portrayals of the specifics of military work. Many of the branches (see, for instance, Navy’s “Accelerate Your Life” campaign) have worked hard to deliver a similar message, but the particular approach targets enlisted candidates more than the potential officers Wall Street is more likely to produce. Exceptions exist where commercials successfully publicize OCS programs in a way that appeals to the meritocratic sensibilities of many Wall Streeters, but these pinpoint freshly graduated students who haven’t yet entered the professional ranks. By ramping out one or two commercials delivering unambiguous challenges to the glut of America’s unemployed young professionals, all branches of the armed services could quickly place themselves in a position to handpick eager talent in a way that would benefit national security for decades.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1058/1435520913_eaded22946_o.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Ga8DI0sYL._SL500_.jpg

Ellie