America, the Ivy League and $$$$
The pipeline of US political leaders from the Ivy League, (Yale and Harvard and Princeton and even Dartmouth...Henry Paulson, the present savior/Treasury Secretary, among others), has been huge and flowing in the last two decades: Bush I, Clinton (both) and many of his/her advisers (Rubin, Reich, etc.), Bush II, Obama were all Ivy Leaguers, Yale and Harvard in fact...
Is there any correlation between these Eastern Establishment education power centers grooming these new leaders and the fact that this country has been overwhelmed with finance during this time (finance doubling its proportion of GNP over a similar period)?
Has money been so central in the American lifestyle (King Credit ruling over all US debt slaves, and lobbyists/$$$$ ruling over the election campaigns and the legislative functioning) that the only way to eventually enter the upper echelon of power is to be introduced to it (it being $$$$) in college. Are these colleges guilty of forming students at 18+ basic into networks of power brokers early...with no career advancement possible later on without an early Ivy League roll-a-dex (or now email) list...a Facebook for Future Financiers?
Is the financial crisis we're in today a product of too much inbreeding, future decision makers all learning from the same textbooks and financial PC thinking, and later patting themselves on the back at future social clubs and forums for agreeing with each other so fervently? Is Wall Street really the Ivy League alumni club; 2-, 4- and 6-year changes in government merely a series of class (pun intended) reunions?
Is it a co-incidence that the Ivy League institutions have the greatest funded endowments, can thereby generate the biggest scholarships to skim of the cream of the US's youthful intellectual elite, and thereby introduce those bright young flexible minds, rich and poor alike, to the basic idea of rich?
Could it be that we have all been co-opted by $$$$ in the last couple of decades by being led and nurtured in this credit/financial/debt thinking by a cadre Eastern-trained Elite irrespective of political party?
Is that the real challenge--and appeal--(and Eastern/New York Times horror) posed by McCain and Palin? They are Westerners and not Eastern intellectuals/elite, at least by training and class criteria, but rather common, average, and non-Ivy League, in manners, attitudes and connections?
John McCain earned his money the old-fashioned way: by marrying into it; and Sarah Palin is still cooking meals for the family.
Is rough-hewn, common-sense-oriented, rebellious (non Establishment) America trying to raise its ugly head once again in national politics: Reagan, Truman, Lincoln, Jackson?
More importantly, will the Ivy League get its collective eye off of maintaining the flow of endowment $$$$ and go back to its preeminence in training our future thinkers and intellectuals and not just our future investment bankers?
Is there any correlation between these Eastern Establishment education power centers grooming these new leaders and the fact that this country has been overwhelmed with finance during this time (finance doubling its proportion of GNP over a similar period)?
Has money been so central in the American lifestyle (King Credit ruling over all US debt slaves, and lobbyists/$$$$ ruling over the election campaigns and the legislative functioning) that the only way to eventually enter the upper echelon of power is to be introduced to it (it being $$$$) in college. Are these colleges guilty of forming students at 18+ basic into networks of power brokers early...with no career advancement possible later on without an early Ivy League roll-a-dex (or now email) list...a Facebook for Future Financiers?
Is the financial crisis we're in today a product of too much inbreeding, future decision makers all learning from the same textbooks and financial PC thinking, and later patting themselves on the back at future social clubs and forums for agreeing with each other so fervently? Is Wall Street really the Ivy League alumni club; 2-, 4- and 6-year changes in government merely a series of class (pun intended) reunions?
Is it a co-incidence that the Ivy League institutions have the greatest funded endowments, can thereby generate the biggest scholarships to skim of the cream of the US's youthful intellectual elite, and thereby introduce those bright young flexible minds, rich and poor alike, to the basic idea of rich?
Could it be that we have all been co-opted by $$$$ in the last couple of decades by being led and nurtured in this credit/financial/debt thinking by a cadre Eastern-trained Elite irrespective of political party?
Is that the real challenge--and appeal--(and Eastern/New York Times horror) posed by McCain and Palin? They are Westerners and not Eastern intellectuals/elite, at least by training and class criteria, but rather common, average, and non-Ivy League, in manners, attitudes and connections?
John McCain earned his money the old-fashioned way: by marrying into it; and Sarah Palin is still cooking meals for the family.
Is rough-hewn, common-sense-oriented, rebellious (non Establishment) America trying to raise its ugly head once again in national politics: Reagan, Truman, Lincoln, Jackson?
More importantly, will the Ivy League get its collective eye off of maintaining the flow of endowment $$$$ and go back to its preeminence in training our future thinkers and intellectuals and not just our future investment bankers?
posted by Cliff Osmond at 12:13 PM
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