Gross’ comments showed up in Toronto’s Globe and Mail
Business columnist Michael Babad wrote:
Bond fund king Bill Gross is stirring things up in his own backyard, criticizing America’s business culture and warning that financier’s have lost the “high ground.”
In comments posted on the website of Pacific Investment Management Co., where he is managing director, Mr. Gross cites a string of busts, from the Savings & Loan crisis to the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
“Having been part of this process and even a member of the rogue’s gallery itself, I know one thing for sure: This is not God’s work – it has the unmistakable odour of Mammon. . . .
“As a profession we have failed miserably at our primary function – the efficient and productive allocation of capital.
“This country desperately requires a rebalancing of priorities. After readjusting the compensation scales via regulation and/or free market common sense, America needs to anoint a new set of Mensans who can create something more than a cash machine and make this country competitive again in the global marketplace.
“We need to find a new economic Keynes or at least elect a chastened Congress that can take our structurally unemployed and give them a chance to be productive workers again … America requires more than a makeover or a facelift. It needs a heart transplant absent the contagious antibodies of money and finance filtering through the system.”
© Michael Babad, Bill Gross rips credit raters, banks, money managers, Globe and Mail [Toronto] (03 February 2011) (quoting Bill Gross) (paragraphs split)
Citation to original essay by Mr. Gross
William H. Gross, Devil’s Bargain, PIMCO (February 2011)
Finance will continue to attract greedy gamers, but if we loosen its hold on government, that cultural trait might not matter so much
But right now Wall Street owns the Presidency and Congress. They’ve set up an economic infrastructure that egregiously rewards people playing with paper, at the expense of those investing in demonstrably productive enterprises.
Tagged: Bill Gross rips credit raters, Devil's Bargain, Michael Babad, William H. Gross