If you don't like the idea that most of the money spent on lottery tickets supports government programs, you should know that most of the earnings from mutual funds support investment advisors' and mutual fund managers' retirement.
The free market is at its best when everybody works in a fish bowl and tells you their point of view... The hedge funds and portfolio managers have a right to do this... We've muted the analysts and their presence in the system.
There are people who are really good managers, people who can manage a big organization, and then there are people who are very analytic or focused on strategy. Those two types don't usually tend to be in the same person. I would put myself much more in the latter camp.
Is puppy love the reason so many Americans are blind to the incompetence and waste of Republicans - who at a minimum are supposed to be good money managers - running Iraq reconstruction?
The inability to delegate is one of the biggest problems I see with managers at all levels.
Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.
I don't like writing straight-up thrillers. I like writing about families hurled into crisis and danger - soccer moms and regular dads and husbands who might have to rescue their daughters or who are, say, hedge fund managers and have one foot on the sidelines watching their kids and the other in nefarious cover-ups and conspiracies.
Managers who don't lead are quite discouraging, but leaders who don't manage don't know what's going on. It's a phony separation that people are making between the two.
Many financial and industrial companies have been bailed out with the public's money, but very few of those who had run those companies have been punished for their failures. Yes, the top managers of those companies have lost their jobs - but with a fat pension and mostly with a handsome severance payment.
In managers, I look for people who can get things done through other people. The most important thing for a good manager is that the people on his team feel like he or she has integrity.