Written by:
Ryan Shyu

More on the Intellectualization of Wall Street

Forbes’ Sramana Mitra, cited in the Online Journal’s Nov. 14th post, isn’t the first to worry that Wall Street is a drain on economic innovation, moving our best and brightest away from actual productive innovation into the realm of financial innovation. No less than Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has supported this notion; when asked during a recent Princeton book signing what he thought of Wall Street’s social use, he said, “I guess I fall into the parasite camp”.

The so-called “parasite camp,” however, isn’t nearly as extreme as another emerging school of thought which actually blames the increasingly intellectual nature of the financial industry for both increasing instability and the 2008 crisis. Calvin Trillin advances this view here.

It’s not clear who is right in this debate, but it’s definitely something worth thinking about especially in light of the inevitable political war over financial regulation that is on the horizon.

Photo courtesy of Flickr.