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Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

nytimes.com

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Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#191

Post by therealcamino »

munchbunny wrote: post #69
eine_zwei wrote: post #53

Agree with all the praise. However, reading him long enough, I started to get annoyed with the blase approach to the Wall Street(tm) transgressions. I do not think it is a case of pandering to your audience. The following quote (about his time in Dealbreaker) captures it perfectly: >Part of the problem was that he couldn’t really access a contempt for Wall Street titans. He was of the place, and he found its workings…

I think it's a resignation to cynicism. It's hard to be angry 24/7. I used to work in a "___-tech" area that I dislike from a moral perspective now, and it's not healthy for anyone, let alone yourself, to be openly angry about it all the time. So, instead, I follow the industry a bit and am mostly resigned to the inevitability of more disappointing news.

One of my favorite pieces of his writing was the "Programming Note" he wrote in June of this year, during/after the protests around George Floyd's death, and the Trump photo op in Lafayette Square. It has his usual insight into what really are the rules behind the rules, and what are the true incentives beneath the surface. It has some of that same sense of resignation, and even goes a bit into where that comes from.

---

Programming note

I don’t know. Mostly I am dazed and heartbroken all the time, and it seems trivial and disrespectful to write a column about finance these days. But this is a financial newsletter, and like a lot of my readers I like having a mostly safe space for finance, so here we are.

A theme of this column over the past few years has been legal realism, the idea that “law,” really, is just what officials do about disputes. Rules, the written laws, the constitution, are all “law” only insofar as they predict or explain the actions of public officials, or persuade those officials to do things. “That is all their importance, except as pretty playthings,” as the great legal realist Karl Llewellyn put it. If this column sometimes seems cynical, it is mostly Karl Llewellyn’s fault.

It seems to me that one central argument of the past few days has been about whether people with power should have to follow rules at all. America has good rules about freedom of speech and assembly and religion; it has a president who violently dispersed a peaceful protest and drove priests from their church so that he could pose for photographs outside of it. America has good rules against unreasonable searches and seizures, about the right to a trial by jury and due process of law; it has a long history of police killing black people with impunity.

A message of the protests is that the police should have to follow the same rules as everybody else, that when they break the law they should face consequences. A message of the response to the protests is: No, they shouldn’t. Is the law what it says? Or is it the raw fact of what the people with the guns and the tear gas do? I think I know the answer and it makes me sad.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#192

Post by odonnellryan »

piva00 wrote: post #177
xyzzyz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good example of what corruption in America looks like. America enjoys a reputation of being a rather non-corrupt country. To large degree, this is true: bribing scandals are rare, and most Americans would be completely aghast at the idea of passing an envelope under the table to the official who is responsible for issuing building permits. Instead, the corruption in the US operates through completely transp…

It's bourgeois aristocracy, the same is true in Europe in a smaller scale: most corruption is done through connections and who-knows-who rather than a peasant cash bribe. Just more layers to peel off from the same basic concept: greed. His description of how unacceptable it is when it looks transactional but how it is fine, and even expected, if it comes from the traditional ways of indirect corruption summarises it…

The massive difference is that in Mexico you have to bribe cops all the time when you get pulled over. In the US the corruption doesn't have a direct impact on your life like that.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#193

Post by roenxi »

Klinky wrote: post #189
roenxi wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you foresee a future where rich and powerful people don't routinely get what they want? That would involve redefining what it means to be rich and powerful. The US's strategy of funnelling the power through visible, legal channels with some levels of consistency is by far the best. If they want their kids in prestigious universities then that is what will happen. There isn't an alternative where the powerful shrug…

Again, the argument is that rich people should be allowed to be corrupt and there is no way to stop them, which is garbage. Firstly, stop stating it's "best" or like OP noting it as "success". Let's tax the rich more and give everyone access to higher education, even the playing field out. Yes you can redefine what rich means, and what poor means, over time through policies. That last part sounds like almost a threat…

> Let's tax the rich more and give everyone access to higher education...

Someone getting in by buying the institution a new building isn't denying anyone access to higher education. In fact, since the institution has a new building it is likely it is increasing access to either education or research opportunities.

> Let's tax the rich more and give everyone access to higher education...

30% of the US does get a degree, so higher education isn't exactly an elite marker.

[2-4 years of time] X [70% of the US that doesn't have a degree] is an enormous number of hours. If someone is not going to use it then they have better things to do than academics. The risk of most of that 70% just looking back at a couple of wasted years is pretty high.

I suppose in fairness it might work out, but even now there are a lot of people getting degrees who havn't managed to parley it up into better outcomes. But it is likely to be a terrible plan, expensive and with marginal positive outcomes.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#194

Post by dodobirdlord »

Klinky wrote: post #188
dodobirdlord wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people can buy things with their money, that’s sorta the point. One of those things is a college admission. Whose integrity is compromised when a college trades an admission slot for a building?

This isn't just for a building, but lesser donations can also potentially gain favor. There should certainly be disclosure if someone is getting favorable treatment due to money. If it's a public institution, it should not be possible at all.

I don't think this is a thing at public institutions for exactly that reason.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#195

Post by piva00 »

odonnellryan wrote: post #192
piva00 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bourgeois aristocracy, the same is true in Europe in a smaller scale: most corruption is done through connections and who-knows-who rather than a peasant cash bribe. Just more layers to peel off from the same basic concept: greed. His description of how unacceptable it is when it looks transactional but how it is fine, and even expected, if it comes from the traditional ways of indirect corruption summarises it…

The massive difference is that in Mexico you have to bribe cops all the time when you get pulled over. In the US the corruption doesn't have a direct impact on your life like that.

No, you have to live in fear that your health insurance is enough for when you eventually need it. Ah, and in fear that your employer is kind enough to not fire you, if so that health insurance might get harder.

Living in fear everyday, just in different ways. I think that has an impact in someone's life.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#196

Post by ksec »

swyx wrote: post #114
o_class_star wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How lucrative is substack?

their top 10 all make at least 7 figures a year and Matt would almost certainly be a top 10 writer

Is there a source for this?

At least a million a year is quite a lot.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#197

Post by harry8 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #180
harry8 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Screwing around with world interest rates that affect billions of people in exchange for day-old sushi – it’s hard to imagine an image that better captures the moral insanity of the modern financial-services sector. "...an image that captures..." I think it's you who misread Taibi's meaning rather than him having missed something there, fwiw.

Considering it never happened I think it's a pretty poor fit for an image that captures, so either way I'm not very impressed.

It is exactly what happened and is literally in the direct quote. The reader is assumed to be sufficiently intelligent to work out that day-old sushi was not actually exchanged in a quid-pro-quo. It is darkly comic but surely isn't funny. The morally and ethically wanton ridculousness of it is what frames the image according to Taibi in his writing. He's deeply aware of what is going on there, suggesing he isn't is really missing the point totally.

Taibi does not write with a style I particularly like. Taibi's politics are not my own. What he does is write masssive stories that are being ignored elsewhere. Wall street criminality. Russia-conspiracy theories discrediting media. Defence funding and contracting. There is always a campaign to discredit him becuase he upsets wealthy, corrupt assholes by shining a light on their behaviour. I wish journalists whose style I cared for more did that. I wish jouranlists whose politics are closer to my own did that. Taibi does do it and that alone is deeply, deeply impressive. We need a lot more of that with many different perspectives and different writing styles. I'll happily start with Taibi because he's doing it and support him totally that he actually does it.

I'm sticking up for Taibi even though I dislike his style and his politics because he's a journalist practisising journalism and not a cheerleader who is playing an acting role of a journalist on tv. Journalism is to be encouraged. Unfair criticisms of journalism should be called out. Yours is such, be that intentionally or not.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#198

Post by Barrin92 »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #172
Klinky wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Examples of worse outcomes? I mean, it sounds like you're saying rich people will find alternative ways to undermine integrity, so we should lessen the path of resistance and just accept it. I am not sure why anyone would be okay with that.

Rich people can buy things with their money, that’s sorta the point. One of those things is a college admission. Whose integrity is compromised when a college trades an admission slot for a building?

over time the entirety of the state apparatus (and business as well) who recruit out of these institutions because excellence and merit are replaced by legacy more and more and the quality of government and leadership continues to decline.

I mean you can literally witness it with your own eyes right now when you look at the US on the world stage. Compare the quality of governance and selection of candidates to a country like Singapore, or hell even China whose ruthless political apparatus weeds out people who don't perform quite effectively.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#199

Post by gerland »

piva00 wrote: post #177
xyzzyz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good example of what corruption in America looks like. America enjoys a reputation of being a rather non-corrupt country. To large degree, this is true: bribing scandals are rare, and most Americans would be completely aghast at the idea of passing an envelope under the table to the official who is responsible for issuing building permits. Instead, the corruption in the US operates through completely transp…

It's bourgeois aristocracy, the same is true in Europe in a smaller scale: most corruption is done through connections and who-knows-who rather than a peasant cash bribe. Just more layers to peel off from the same basic concept: greed. His description of how unacceptable it is when it looks transactional but how it is fine, and even expected, if it comes from the traditional ways of indirect corruption summarises it…

Maybe it was not such a good idea to demolish the warriors caste after all? It seems that the 3rd state has merged with, or rather became, the aristocracy. Taking into account that the peasants defended them against the neo-warrior-caste in the last Great War, and that their lavish lifestyle comes greatly from taxation of the peasants, the long noses should hang for a long time now.
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