Memo from the Department of Silver Linings
The same issue of Esquire referenced in the last post includes an article from Ken Kurson — now a political consultant in Washington — explaining how he quit his work as a financial commentator because of his disgust at the excesses and wrong-headedness of Wall Street.*
Why I’m Happy the Stock Market Crashed
The article is short, and worth a few minutes of your time, especially for Kurson’s contrarian views on three “myths” that he sees as being exploded by the financial meltdown:
- Myth: Investment banks are an indispensable source of “innovation” and liquidity.
- Myth: Home ownership is an unalloyed good.
- Myth: “Deregulation” caused this.
As he closes the piece, Kurson offers this perspective, which ought to count as a silver lining if you’re brave enough to venture into the stock market these days:
On October 10, I bought GE stock for $18.77 and Altria for $16.58 — wildly profitable companies with price-earnings ratios under 10 and yields of about 7 percent. There are great American companies paying out suddenly valuable American dollars as dividends. I just can’t cry too hard when the stock market is holding the greatest sale of my lifetime. It’s enough to make me want to write a bullish finance column.
(Emphasis added.) If it need be said, I’m not giving investment advice here, but it’s worth noting that Fred Wilson, who has made a few nickels in 20+ years as a venture capitalist in New York, also sees bargains aplenty in the current environment, as he explains here.
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( * Footnote — Food for thought: how disgusting would a thing have to be so you would leave it to go into political consulting?)
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Photo by eflon.
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because he’s bullshitting. he did not really leave financial writing to be a political consultant. Or because he was disgusted. It’s called artistic license. ken’s good at taking advantage of artistic license to tell a story that works to his advantage. It’s why political consulting does not disgust him.
Bubulah, I didn’t write that I left financial writing to become a political consultant. I said I left financial writing cuz the excesses disgusted me. They did and I did. There was a fairly lengthy period after leaving financial writing, very much akin to Bob Dylan’s “Slow Train Coming” era, except instead of becoming a born-again Christian, I was mostly writing speeches, siring children and taking naps. But the point is that I did indeed leave financial writing. And the reason political consulting does not disgust me is that it’s not disgusting. — Ken Kurson