The More Things Change....
Alex Rosemblat MBA'10
Issue date: 5/12/09 Section: Opinion
Dean Schmittlein noted last week at the last Town Hall of the 2008-2009 academic year, that this has truly been an "extraordinary" year. After making that statement, he followed up by saying that as a person in his position, at the closing event of a season, he's practically obligated to make such a claim, but after the events of this past year, he sincerely meant it.
As the financial markets around the world crashed and burned, and took the economies of their respective nations along with them, many of us realized that we were living in unique times. Our perception of the world, and even more unsettling, the way that the world worked, was changing in front of our eyes. Unfortunately, these changes made many of our lives quite stressful: The rising uncertainty in the world markets translated into fewer job opportunities for many, fewer openings from companies that had traditionally been Sloan mainstays, and in some disillusioning cases, delayed or cancelled full-time offers originating from summer internships. Despite the world looking radically different now than it did at the same time last year, some truisms have never seemed truer:
Where There's Smoke, There's Fire - There were numerous articles that had stated that something was not quite right on Wall Street and a number of predictions that accurately foresaw the financial collapse. Although the data that many of these economists and financial analysts presented had some validity, many of these voices were ignored or actively pushed aside because they criticized the "big players" in the market who, in the end, brought the global financial system down.
The Only Constant Is Change - Who would have thought that Bear Stearns and Lehman, two of the most revered names on Wall Street could fold? They did... quickly.
The analysts that created the complicated financial instruments based off pooled mortgages thought that housing prices couldn't drop. Some of the software that they used for their valuations didn't even allow them to input decreasing values. They were proven wrong. As unsettling at it seems, there isn't much in this world that we can take for granted, or accept as always remaining the way it is.
As the financial markets around the world crashed and burned, and took the economies of their respective nations along with them, many of us realized that we were living in unique times. Our perception of the world, and even more unsettling, the way that the world worked, was changing in front of our eyes. Unfortunately, these changes made many of our lives quite stressful: The rising uncertainty in the world markets translated into fewer job opportunities for many, fewer openings from companies that had traditionally been Sloan mainstays, and in some disillusioning cases, delayed or cancelled full-time offers originating from summer internships. Despite the world looking radically different now than it did at the same time last year, some truisms have never seemed truer:
Where There's Smoke, There's Fire - There were numerous articles that had stated that something was not quite right on Wall Street and a number of predictions that accurately foresaw the financial collapse. Although the data that many of these economists and financial analysts presented had some validity, many of these voices were ignored or actively pushed aside because they criticized the "big players" in the market who, in the end, brought the global financial system down.
The Only Constant Is Change - Who would have thought that Bear Stearns and Lehman, two of the most revered names on Wall Street could fold? They did... quickly.
The analysts that created the complicated financial instruments based off pooled mortgages thought that housing prices couldn't drop. Some of the software that they used for their valuations didn't even allow them to input decreasing values. They were proven wrong. As unsettling at it seems, there isn't much in this world that we can take for granted, or accept as always remaining the way it is.
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