Bonus Bananas November 15, 2013

1) Investment Manager Explains Why 99.5% Of Americans Can Never Win (Business Insider) - This was pretty much the last thing I needed to read the day after learning that a 23-year old unapologetic douchebag turned his nose up at $3 BILLION cash for a nonsensical app he created less than two years ago. I'm probably wasting my appointment in the isolation tank tomorrow, because all I'm gonna think about is how rigged the system is and how much Haterade is flowing through my veins right now. And now there's this. Goddammit.

2) Guy Who Was In Charge Of Quantitative Easing Apologizes For Quantitative Easing (Consumerist) - Here's something you don't see every day (or, like, ever since Woodrow Wilson apologized for creating the Federal Reserve in 1913). Yup, it was a mistake, but it's one we all have to live with. Thanks, dick.

3) What rich men want (and don't want) in a woman (CNBC) - Some real shockers here. Young, hot, thin, blonde, big rack. Yup, that's some groundbreaking material, CNBC.

4) This is how much money people with your personality make (Career Assesment Site) - Do you know your Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator? Then here's a handy infographic that will let you know how much money you can expect to make, among other things.

5) Li-Fi Turns Every Lightbulb Into an Ultra-Fast Wireless Network (Mashable) - Can this be a thing, like, yesterday? This technology is promising 10x faster wi-fi due to the electromagnetic wave of light. It's especially critical in high polulation density areas like New York, where current wi-fi signals are stepping all over each other.

6) An Honest Grad School Application Essay (Post Grad Problems) - They say honesty is the best policy. Wouldn't it be great if you could submit something like this and have adcoms read it and laugh and give you a green light?

7) Five Things Every Self-Respecting Man Over 30 Needs. And 40 He Doesn’t. (The Good Men Project) - Here's a really good Fight Club-esque rant against male consumerism highlighting the things that are truly important in life. Well done.

8) How Disney Ruined Sex For Everyone (Mark Manson) - Huge hat tip to @karypto for finding this nugget of gold. If you only read one thing this week, make it this. You'll be the better man for it.

9) Adventures of a Serial Trespasser (The Atlantic) - I've been meaning to post this for over a month now. Just an epic photo essay of some of the strangest places on Earth taken by a guy who has made his living breaking into forbidden spaces with his camera. Really cool stuff.

10) There’s Something In This Peaceful Picture That You Don’t Realize. When You See It…OMG. (ViralNova) - Here's some nightmare fuel for ya. We have a similar problem with fire ants after a hurricane in New Orleans. Kill me now.

Video of the Week:

You don't have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Trekkie to appreciate the humor in the following Audi commercial. Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy bend the space-time continuum in a race to the country club. Pretty funny hook at the end too. Enjoy:

Not to be outdone, Jean-Claude Van Damme is probably gonna sell a few Volvo 18-wheelers with this psycho move:

That's it for this week, monkeys! Let me know what you think about this week's Bananas in the comments and have an outrageous weekend!

 

America needs more commercial that are over one minute and play Enya in the background. I feel you capture so much more emotion in over 60 seconds. Great videos. And thanks for the mention!

 
Cruncharoo:

I just took an online test and got ISTJ. It was pretty bunk test though, any one have a link to a good one?

I did mine through my university, along with the Strong Interest Inventory (SII) at the same time. In total I think it cost 30 bucks, and I spoke with some psychologist about my results.

They also pointed me to the book "Do What You Are" which gives a more detailed analysis.

Turns out I'm slightly interested in Computer Science, Finance, and Law, and I'm slightly interesting and slightly conventional.

 
businessinsider:
Folks in the top 0.1% come from many backgrounds but it's infrequent to meet one whose wealth wasn't acquired through direct or indirect participation in the financial and banking industries. One of our clients, net worth in the $60M range, built a small company and was acquired with stock from a multi-national. Stock is often called a "paper" asset. Another client, CEO of a medium-cap tech company, retired with a net worth in the $70M range. The bulk of any CEO's wealth comes from stock, not income, and incomes are also very high. Last year, the average S&P 500 CEO made $9M in all forms of compensation. ...another was able to amass $12M after taxes by her early thirties from stock options as a high level programmer in a successful IT company. The picture is clear; entry into the top 0.5% and, particularly, the top 0.1% is usually the result of some association with the financial industry and its creations. I find it questionable as to whether the majority in this group actually adds value or simply diverts value from the US economy and business into its pockets and the pockets of the uber-wealthy who hire them. They are, of course, doing nothing illegal.
WHAT?? I am dumbfounded at the stupidity here. One guy started a company, sold it. Another guy ran/grew a tech company, and was rewarded for that. Another was a high-level programmer at a company that did well, and was rewarded for that. How did these people NOT add value? What does any of this have to do with wall street/banking?
 
prospie:
businessinsider:

Folks in the top 0.1% come from many backgrounds but it's infrequent to meet one whose wealth wasn't acquired through direct or indirect participation in the financial and banking industries.
One of our clients, net worth in the $60M range, built a small company and was acquired with stock from a multi-national. Stock is often called a "paper" asset. Another client, CEO of a medium-cap tech company, retired with a net worth in the $70M range. The bulk of any CEO's wealth comes from stock, not income, and incomes are also very high. Last year, the average S&P 500 CEO made $9M in all forms of compensation.
...another was able to amass $12M after taxes by her early thirties from stock options as a high level programmer in a successful IT company. The picture is clear; entry into the top 0.5% and, particularly, the top 0.1% is usually the result of some association with the financial industry and its creations. I find it questionable as to whether the majority in this group actually adds value or simply diverts value from the US economy and business into its pockets and the pockets of the uber-wealthy who hire them. They are, of course, doing nothing illegal.

WHAT?? I am dumbfounded at the stupidity here. One guy started a company, sold it. Another guy ran/grew a tech company, and was rewarded for that. Another was a high-level programmer at a company that did well, and was rewarded for that. How did these people NOT add value? What does any of this have to do with wall street/banking?

I found that article pretty ridiculous. So anybody who owns stock now has a "close association with the financial industry"?

 
Thurnis Haley:

I found that article pretty ridiculous. So anybody who owns stock now has a "close association with the financial industry"?

Exactly. The guy who started Snapchat is now an evil investment banker because of his large equity/stock holdings.
 
Thurnis Haley:

WHAT?? I am dumbfounded at the stupidity here. One guy started a company, sold it. Another guy ran/grew a tech company, and was rewarded for that. Another was a high-level programmer at a company that did well, and was rewarded for that. How did these people NOT add value? What does any of this have to do with wall street/banking?

I found that article pretty ridiculous. So anybody who owns stock now has a "close association with the financial industry"?

I think the outrage is that they got rich from the asset appreciation on the consideration, not the business they built. But you have to take risk to get asset appreciation - i.e. to get to the $3bn offer, they had to turn down the $1bn offer. The guy who sold for stock could have taken cash. The programmer could have sold their shares pre-IPO on SecondMarket. The CEO may or may not have had the option to divest their holdings, and may or may not have been overpaid, but most likely his company killed it during his tenure for him to amass that wealth.

Also, the anti-male consumerism rant is dumb because the article is calls out isn't even that foppish/consumerist. There is literally one thing on that list I consider a stupid hipster/luxury purchase - a record player, and honestly, music is important to modern living, so I would be OK with a set of headphones or something replacing it. The rest of the stuff if what you would call basic necessities in modern middle-class society (sheets, socks, an Korean car). It explicitly avoids the magazine conceit of picking absurdly expensive examples of basic items (the watch is cheap, the shoes shown are not but the caption makes it clear it is a joke).

 
prospie:

WHAT?? I am dumbfounded at the stupidity here. One guy started a company, sold it. Another guy ran/grew a tech company, and was rewarded for that. Another was a high-level programmer at a company that did well, and was rewarded for that. How did these people NOT add value? What does any of this have to do with wall street/banking?

In each case, the value they contributed was unlocked, multiplied by stock sales. Hence they appropiated value of future cash flows stemming from their stake in the company, not just current cash flows as they would have received from their income only.

 
Best Response

Yes. The whole concept of an extremely lucrative "exit" for a business is largely a creation of the financial system. Without cheap debt, the expectation of flipping the business again in five years, or the need to placate the Street with some M&A activity, you wouldn't have someone become a decamillionaire overnight. Try running a buyout model where you don't have an exit in five years and you don't buy the company with a bunch of debt. Check out your returns. That's life without the financial system as currently constructed.

Everyone knows the whole game is rigged in favor of finance. And yeah, a lot of corporate profits are kept overseas. But I don't really fault people for taking advantage of finance's favored status or moving operations to a tax haven to maximize profits. To the continual shock of lawmakers and politicians, people respond to incentives, so these actions are, dare I say, logical. Maybe if we don't want the financial sector running our economy we shouldn't dump billions of dollars into the banks via the purchase and sale of government bonds. Maybe if we don't want private equity managers making $20mm a year we shouldn't have a tax code that favors debt and capital gains and penalizes ordinary income, and maybe if we don't want corporations shipping their profits overseas, we should re-visit our tax rates.

 

Was it? I've taken it and purposely changed a few of my answers that I was on the fence about, and certain factors always remain the same for me.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for freedom of thought which they seldom use.
 

I think it has more to do with the fact that the longer tests ask the same question but give differently worded answers to. It is also a time based assumption. You are supposed to pick the first answer that best fits your views. So the time it takes you to answer factors into the results.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

1) The article is fairly straight forward, however I don't think there is a cabal of people actively pursuing a policy to hold the rest of the 99% down. 9) Pretty cool. Reminds me of a joke I heard recently. "Do you know who Banksy is?" "The street artist?""No, the vandal."

Nice to know Van Damme's still got it.

PE is the new black.
 

@ krauser - same exact thing for me, I and P borderline, NT very strong. I'm guessing that if I start jumping to conclusions because I start the day off with a drink or two, I should make it into the top tier of earners at some point?

@ evilbyaccident - realize also that the distribution is extremely segregated for NT types. Sure there's a bunch of losers sitting around parsing out stereotypical "Big Bang Theory" style crap, but this is also the designation of the highest level of genius possible. Guys like Enstein, Darwin, Hawkings, Adam Smith, Alan Greenspan, etc don't necessarily have a use for money given their influence. People kind of just give them what they want and do stuff for them.

Get busy living
 
krauser:

Don't worry, we'll make it. High I and P types are the real slackers/procrastinators. High NT plus a decent amount of practicality and ambition = win all the way.

I'm guessing to focus on high I functions, the best way is doctoral level work where thinking a lot has a big payoff?
Get busy living
 
Edmundo Braverman:
I'm probably wasting my appointment in the isolation tank tomorrow, because all I'm gonna think about is how rigged the system is and how much Haterade is flowing through my veins right now.
ha, have a good float man, free your mind

//www.youtube.com/embed/Jtz4Tzr9WJk

just did another one today, patrick asked if i'm a junkie :)

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