Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

25% of the current Ivy+ SCOTUS judges did not go to an Ivy+ for undergrad? With additional reforms of the graduate programs would you expect that future numbers would increase or decrease?

EDIT - for some reason it will not allow me to reply to your reply...

There are 8 current judges from Ivy+ law schools and 6 of them went to Ivy+ undergrad programs. That's how I got to 25%.

I guess I question why increasing the number of judges on the Supreme Court would change the percentage of (non-Ivy+ undergrad --> Ivy+ JD) justices. I would think that the only way to do that is to increase the number of non-Ivy+ undergrads admitted to the Ivy+ JD programs.

I mean, increasing the number of balls you randomly draw from a bag of balls increases the odds of getting one of the rare balls. But increasing the proportion of rare balls in the bag such that they aren't rare anymore increases the probability more, with the added benefit for every formerly rare ball that wasn't selected for the bench.

The big short basically painted it as a naked cash grab by cackling Wall Street traders. My experience was it was fairly prosaic at the banks, essentially trying to construct products our customers wanted to buy. There was a lot of stuff that was going wrong, a lot of it was at:

At the micro level:

* local and regional banks stuffing mortgage pipelines with garbage, colluding with appraisers and others to make outrageous loans with fabricated or otherwise fraudulent docs

* loan officers effectively tricking ill equipped borrowers into unsuitable products against suitability requirements

At the macro level:

* rating agencies were ill equipped and were rating structured products AAA despite them paying junk bond returns - we tried to show them models demonstrating their ratings were too rosy but they kept us at arms length - as they should - but we felt it was really important they reassess. They wouldn’t.

* Large institutional investors seeking juiced returns but were restricted to AAA investments were eager for the junk returns, and were aware that these products were very risky despite the rating

The banks weren’t angels in this, but it’s been sold as a Wall Street issue. It was far greater than the street.

Also, “the big short” was taken on because Goldman stopped using theoretic models for valuing CDO’s and used fundamental models that showed they were extremely long subprime mortgage risk. As market makers they have risk limits on their books by internal policy and were required by their risk officers to short subprime to bring them within neutral risk with respect to their subprime mortgage exposure. It wasn’t a nefarious plot to screw the American mortgage holder - it was the bank functioning properly with proper risk management, the problem wasn’t the “big short” - it was the “big long.” Market makers are not speculators - their whole purpose is to stay neutral in the market and facilitate anyone who wants to trade long or short by quoting both sides.

> I've seen dozens of theories on how to interview and triage people, but few approaches beat the cost-benefit of supporting decisions based on a degree from a solid institution.

This is my exact opposite experience. Degrees are meaningless unless you've literally just left college. Even then, it tells you their scores in particular subjects, it does not tell you their attitude, work ethic, general problem solving ability, etc.

I ignore qualifications unless you've just completed it. Experience is a better guide and, I know this is controversial, just talking to the candidate - it's amazing what people will expose once they feel comfortable that they're having a friendly chat.

> Having managed over 100+ people, I can say that on average the people from better institutions are better employees - even though I have managed amazing people without college degrees and bad people with amazing degrees. The top schools can be pretty darn great, Harvard being just one of them.

What do you recommend those of us who didn't get into any top schools do then? If clearly we're destined to be inferior for life?

Interesting idea, not sure how enforcement would work. That being said, this pretty much already happens in practice. Many people go their whole lives driving (safely) over the speed limit without ever getting a ticket, because they aren't being reckless about it.

Generally police officers will ignore you if you're just going with the flow or slightly faster. It's when you start going a lot faster or weaving or being otherwise reckless that they start to care.